Episode 2-28: The Dragapult Ice Cream Parlor

I've removed the bit at the end where you called us the Uncommon Energy podcast. Probably the best. Save that for the blooper reel. Right. Right. OK, but the one thing I actually I thought would be an interesting thing to talk about before we do anything like fully Pokemon related is with Spirit Airlines shutting down. Yeah, I think that you think that that's going to negatively impact regional attendance. I feel like a lot of Pokemon players fly on Spirit and Frontier. Orlando. Yeah, but I don't know about other regionals. I don't know how big Spirit is outside of South Florida. Oh, really? I mean, it's not it's not nothing, but it never felt like there's other options like there's JetBlue, Southwest, you know, Allegiant, Breeze, Frontier. I've never heard of Breeze, but I know that it's the East Coast, like northern, northeastern, I think. I was like, I know Southwest used to be the cheap airline. And now it's definitely lost that title. But I know the Spirit was like a pretty I guess maybe it maybe it is my bias from Florida that I just I know when I went last year, I think. So I drove to Atlanta. I flew southwest because I had points and I flew there, flew southwest when I went to Puerto Rico. But oh, and I flew southwest because I had points when I went to New Orleans. But when I went to, I think, two of the other regionals that I flew to, I took Spirit and it was a god awful experience. As a as a flyer who has flown on real airlines, I would not wish that upon anybody, but I totally understand why people utilized it. It's a bus. It was a bus. It's it's like taking a greyhound in the sky. Exactly. I took Spirit for Orlando regionals. And I mean, you just wear noise canceling headphones. It felt like because, you know, I was coming from Richmond to Orlando and like it was all families for spring break. Like it was just all kids. And like, you know, that's fine. Like I don't normally want to be on a plane with kids. But like, you know, so be it is what it is. And I think, yeah, you just grin and bear it. But yeah, I think if there is an impact, it might just make it the relative cost of flying higher and that would suck. So maybe like you can't go to. And I mean that I hate to say it, but like the prices of flights have gone up quite a bit already just with stuff not involving Pokemon. Right. Right. But so it's going to be more economically challenging, I think, next season to fly all around the U.S. and the world. Like you probably won't see as many US players going over to you. Or I mean, I don't know. I hope that's not the case. Like I hope we still see like the numbers of Japanese players coming and playing in our tournaments and like South American players coming up for Orlando. So we'll see. But yeah, I'm hopeful that it doesn't impact it too much. I think it would be cool a little bit for at some point regionals to get an actual like regional feel to them again, rather than just being here's a major tournament that everyone goes to. And then here's another major tournament that everyone goes to. And being able to see, you know, you do still have tendencies, right? Like if you look at local metagames on the West Coast versus local metagames on the East Coast, there are preferences of players in those different areas that lean one way or the other. And you don't really get to see that. There's a little bit of shift in metagame percentages when you look at these major events. But for the most part, it gets kind of drowned out by the mass number of players, especially when you do have so many people that are traveling from out of the area. And I think that you would see more drastic shifts in percentage that would be evident if you were able to have something be more localized. Yeah, I mean, that's how regionals used to be. You know, back in the day when you had three on the same weekend and all in different locations across the U.S. But, you know, it's just that's not where we're at. And I mean, no, it's not. This is just being in like full nostalgia mode. I know there's like there's a player of mine that goes to my league every week and he just tells me about how he wishes states were a thing. And I'm like, yeah, be great. The problem, when do you do it? Yeah, only time you do it is like during the summer break. Yeah. And at that point, it's like, who are you doing that for at that point? I mean, so I know that there was the whole Twitter argument like Jake Gearhart, like freaking out about, well, you know, I'm in school and I need a major event when I when I'm off of school. And I think that it could it could fill that gap. It could serve that group of players if you market it as a non championship point event where even if there are no championship points, maybe you give the winner of each tournament an invite to worlds and you just allot that into your pool of invites for the year because you're adding what? Well, I don't know if you're doing a state level tournament than. Yeah, quite a few. But it doesn't have to fully be states, right? Like that's where you could make it a full like if we're not broadcasting these events, potentially you could run. What, 10 of them on the same weekend and have some level of more localized tournament organizer handle it rather than being a big, giant super major event, and that's when we get back into like the Hilton ballrooms and we have our like four to three to 400 player event and you call it a day. Like you knock it out in a weekend and you're good to go. Yeah. I mean, you could do more special events. I think that's an option. Like Puerto Rico special event, you just do it for, you know, like you can pick a weekend and say, well, just do three special events all over the U.S. like that kind of thing. Make it a little bit less like make the caps smaller. The pricing is less dramatic, so people don't show up as much. And then, yeah, that allows people like you do them in areas that aren't like workplaces where we do regionals. So you have people that can go to those like you do one. I don't know. In Colorado or like, yeah, like Denver, Nashville. I think you'd have a lot of people show up at the Hawaii. Yes. Yeah, that's fair. Be honest with you. Like Massachusetts hasn't had a regionals in forever. I mean, Connecticut had one, but that was like four years ago now. So yeah, get like the Boston S.P.E. in there or New York. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's a caucus again. Something like that. No, I'm talking like we're going to have one inside the Empire State Building. Yeah, the finals will be played in the torch of the Statue of Liberty. You have people playing. Actually, that's what we do. Put everybody on the subway and you have to make sure you get on the right train when you're around. So, oh, my gosh, that's crazy. Everybody starts round one at Grand Central and you go from there. Yeah. And if you lose, you're forced to ride the subway the rest of the day. If you win, you get off. Well, now that we've got now that we have to get a little bit here. Welcome to the episode. John and I are back together for the first time in a month now. So thank you to John for holding down the fort. And thank you, Pat, for coming on the last episode that we put out. We wanted to record last week, had an actual like decent idea for an episode. We had somebody in a comment request a retro card sports episode, as they called it. And we were going to do a full time capsule episode. But unfortunately, I had family stuff come up. I was a little busy on Tuesday and then it was John's and his wife's anniversary on Wednesday. So we just weren't able to record last week. And it's what it is. We'll get to that at some point. Not this week, because we do have an upcoming major event this weekend. So we did want to talk about that heading into it. Don't quite have time to do a full time capsule deep dive. But before we get into, you know, we didn't do a full prog recap. We're still not going to do a full prog recap, but we'll reference some of those lists when we're talking about what people should probably be ready for heading into L.A. this weekend. And we're also looking at chaos rising pre releases this weekend with the interesting trend. You know, we've had these much smaller sets recently. Like we look at this one here on Pokemon proxies dot com, which I believe is hosted by Jack from Omni poke. But, you know, set is only 86 cards, right? Like we gone are the days of what was a fusion strike. The 300 card or ascended heroes, the massive super sets where we're getting two to three Japanese sets glommed into one thing. And now we're getting individual set releases that just coincide one to one with single Japanese sets. And it's weird to me because it almost feels like they're stalling because of the delay of winds and waves. So they're like, hey, we can't shove everything together, delay the content, delay the content, push it out. Or is this a thing where they're we're getting close ish to simultaneous release? And I know I talked about this about a month ago, but or maybe it was on Pokemon Day. Actually, now that I think about it, when they showed us that that 30th anniversary set is going to release simultaneously globally. And I think that's supposed to come out in October. Maybe it's December. But like we're getting chaos rising May 22nd. Sometime this month, they're getting what is I don't remember what it's called in Japan. I know in English, when it comes out in July, it's going to be called pitch black. And I'm just wondering at some point, like, are we trying to edge closer to simultaneous release and again, probably just me wanting it to happen more so than it actually happening? But I think we're going to have when we were teased and promised the one for the 30th anniversary. But I'd be surprised if we keep up with them after that. Like we the closest we ever got was like two weeks delay, but I'm hopeful that I'm with you. Paradox Rift, I think, was only a couple of weeks apart. Yeah, something like that. That was that was felt it felt really cool. Like that was right. Nice, because now you're able to innovate at the same time. Japan's innovating and like you're collaborating on this. So it's the cool thing. Exactly. And you're able to see true innovation when we more than likely we would have a major event in the Western world before they had a Champions League in Japan, unless they were having it like the second weekend after the set came out. Right. And instead, like you said, we're going to play catch up. Like they've had chaos rising for forever. They're actually going to have a second Champions League. I don't know if it's this weekend or next weekend utilizing this set before it even gets released here and before they get the pitch black cards. It's an IEG, too, so they're going to have that big expanded event there, which I know people were complaining about it, where I think they had some kind of expanded event recently and like 31 of the 32 top 32 players were all Reggie Drago. Goodness. So expanded is cooked. Like you're just you're just kind of done in that format. They and I know it's kind of been dead in the West. Do you think that there's ever a chance if we were going to bring it back? Would they rotate? Like, do you rotate away some of the black and white look? Do a ban list if you're not going to rotate it? Like you have to do something. You have to revitalize the ban. You'd have to ban so many cards, though, I feel. Yeah, that's kind of the issue, I think, is for it to be a genuinely viable format and feel healthy and fun. You'd have to like really get the playtesters testing it and like dedicate a lot of R&D. And I don't think that's really worth Pokemon Company time and effort at this point, which I think it's fair. Like in the thing with it is like if fans want to play, like if players want to play expanded, you can make your own ban list. You can, you know, kind of make house rules with it. It's like ban Reggie Drago or something like that, you know. So I don't know if that will ever get to a point where people care enough, but I'm hopeful. I like playing. I mean, I don't know if I like playing expanded, but it's cool that it's a potential format. And I might like, you know, in our two month break coming up, I might have like a night where we do an expanded night or a retro deck night for sure. So it's always good to have more Pokemon in different ways. So I'm not going to say don't do it. Just it's going to take a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. More than I would want to put into it, for sure. But that being said, small set here with it, with Cajet, Chaos Rising, almost a ninja spinner, Japanese name. John and I were just going to call out a few kind of highlight cards for the set rather than doing a full deep dive, even though the set is rather small. And the first one we were going to talk about here is Beedrill EX. So 310 HP grass stage to EX Pokemon, not Mega Beedrill, surprisingly. But we do have a bee rumble attack for a single grass energy does 110 damage for each beedrill you have in play, including Beedrill EX. And as far as I'm aware, Beedrill EX is the only Beedrill that's currently standard legal. But we do have force of vitality in the format. So you can don to put an extra 110 damage into play rather easily and just kind of blow things up. And it's it's seen a smattering of success here and there. Like it got some stream highlights during the last Champions League. I don't think it got anywhere. I don't think it made top 32, though. But it's weird. It's kind of like one of those things where you never fully know how good a deck is watching a Champions League because best of one is so volatile. You also don't really know what the play rate of the card is. But I have a feeling that something that can do 330 or 440 for one energy just seems like it will see success at some point. Yeah, I mean, it's a very efficient attacker. Definitely. I mean, grass has a lot of good things going for it right now. The one thing I'm worried about is and we've talked about this in the past with decks that just hit for lots of damage is you just you're predictable and you don't have a second attack that you can use. If we had another if we get another bead roll that has like a you know, it's a basic bead roll instead of a two prizer. Not basic as in the evolution stage, but as in, yeah, just a single prizer bead roll that has like a good attack or like does it affect like paralysis or something cool like that? I could totally see a world where these two kind of have some counterplay and you can like play and do each other and like, you know, heal the well, we don't have any healing cards anymore, but like you can retreat the bead roll and put it on the bench and kind of pivot between the two and have some actual gameplay that's going on. But it's going to be tougher. I don't know. Like, it's not impossible to get your stage twos out, but it's like it just doesn't seem as easy. I don't know. With the tools we have now, we have done and we have bug hedging said we have pokey bad, so it's not like impossible. But I don't know. You don't like you don't have a flutter wings, be drill like you did last time. No, right. About your be drill swarm into play. I'm trying to think and we don't have like grotto rotated a while ago now. I don't think there's anything similar to that for grass Pokemon currently. Not currently that I'm aware of. There's like the Erica's Tangereth, but that's just for Erica's Pokemon. Sure, sure, sure. And the other thing I hadn't thought about this before, but like a super rod not being legal is probably a big blow for a deck like this where you're like, then do I really have to commit to playing multiple secret? Yeah, I think like one or two sacred ashes still gets you there. You know, like one sacred ash one. Um. a gold mind stretcher or so. Yeah. Or like an Alana Zade maybe. Like that kind of. And really praying that you don't prize any of your pieces. True. Yeah if you prize sacred ash it could feel pretty bad. Well I may just prize you prize a weedle in your heart. That too. You're in trouble. Yeah you're. Yeah. I mean. But. Yeah. It definitely I think has potential. Like you said maybe maybe the linearity of the card in tandem with the fact that you really need to have three or four of them on the field for it to be successful could hold it back a bit. That really denies you those bench spaces for support Pokemon. And speaking of support Pokemon we have a pretty distinct lack of onboard draw currently. Next card I wanted to talk about was Delphox which has the flare magic ability. Once during your turn you may discard a basic fire energy from your hand and draw until you have seven cards. And then the attack is two fires for energy storm does 30 damage for each energy attached to all Pokemon to play both yours and your opponents. And the reason I wanted to talk about this is actually not purely for the Delphox it's because Japan also got a gym promo which I'm pretty sure we won't get until pitch black unfortunately. But there's a mega Delphox EX that has an attack for one colorless energy. That is look at the top 10 cards of your deck. You may put any Pokemon you find there on your bench so you get to just play this kind of go tall almost reminds me of like a Greninja break type deck with mega Delphox and Delphox. You're just spreading all of your foxes everywhere. You're getting extra breaks into play or Delphox themselves off of that attack. The Fennekin has a call for family attack Delphox baby Delphox is topping you up in terms of keeping your hand full while also having a very efficient attack for a one price Pokemon. And I don't know it seems like an interesting deck moving forward and onboard draw is always good. Yeah especially in this format where we don't have as many supporters that draw cards and exactly it can feel really bad if you're just sitting on a pretty empty hand and supporter drowning. I like this card I like having more draw options in our format that makes a lot of sense and yeah it's a kind of a throwback to the XY base set Delphox. Oh true. Similar ability yeah and had an attack that hit for how much energy you had on play. So it's significantly worse card but like this card's a lot better from a ability and a attack standpoint so pretty cool and hopefully you'll see some play. Next card we're going to look at is probably the title card I guess of this one. It's not Ninja Spinner but you know in our hearts it is and so Mega Greninja EX has a really good ability and Mortal Shuriken says during your turn if this Pokemon is the active spot you may discard a basic water energy card from your hand in order to use this ability and you place six damage counters on one of your opponent's Pokemon. We've seen this before with Greninja Break back in the XY era this is kind of a callback to that. That one had the same ability I believe right it wasn't the same name but I think it was called like giant yeah like giant water shuriken yeah and then the attack is Ninja Spinner for two water energy it does 120 and you may put a water energy attached to this Pokemon into your hand and have this attack do 80 more damage so kind of a solid attack similar again to another Greninja we had in that same format that was like the shadow stitching one and I think at the second attack but I don't like the fact that it's two water it's significantly worse than the other Greninja back in the day but you know it's not that bad and you definitely don't need to attack with this one you can kind of use it as a pivot we have a lot of cool water pivot options right now with like surfing beach and surfer I guess is one and then trying to remember what else we have we have like I mean even just an air balloon yeah air balloon you could run it with I think the palafin is still like the it's still legal right yeah it is so you could run it with a palafin deck potentially which would be cool it might be a lot to get to go to work together but there's a lot of potential there I think the thing that I really like about this card is the fact that we still have the Twilight Masquerade Terra Greninja legal as well true so you get to mix your typings like this one's weak to lightning the other one is weak to psychic so you get split weaknesses you get to share the same energy type you get to hit the lightning Pokemon with the attack from the fighting Pokemon and like you said you just get to kind of pick off dust goals and other small basics on your opponent's bench with this and then pivot back into your other Greninja to do 170 smack something in the active or snipe two things for 120 and then just kind of go from there and you could also like if you really wanted to you could play neo upper as your ace pack to fulfill the attack cost for this and just one energy instead of keep your neo upper safe by bouncing it back to your hand every turn that's true so definitely some options there not too bad yeah it could be good um yeah I I don't know it hasn't done super well in Japan from what we've seen but I think there's still potential in the card and it might be like if the format slows down a little bit and we're not so reliant upon hitting super fast like because it's a stage two deck we can slow the format down just a little bit I think it can like set up and pick boards apart pretty well shout out to Ampris real quick so has a decent ability where if you have the same number of cards in your hand hand is your opponent it does 80 more damage and the tech's not that good but there is a um flaffy that has disconnect for 40 so you're doing um with the relicanth from temporal force not temporal forces uh what is it I don't remember what card that what's that from me I think is it legal is it journey together or no it's not journey it's my I think it's surging sparks yeah um but from the relicanth uh we'll let you copy this pokemon and you can get the buff from the ability so you can do disconnect for 120 which is pretty solid for two energy um being able to trade or lock on a base on a one prizer is always good um and I mean we'll see I it's kind of like uh do you think it's enough probably not but these are like the decks that always sneak up on people whenever they forget about them I'm thinking like back at like the vika volt v the that give you archer tang played for a regional win just like randomly one time um and it just destroyed these opponents because they weren't ready for trainer lock like if we get to a point where item lock is that detrimental this could see some play that'd be pretty cool so the fact that it takes two energies is probably I think what's going to hold it back yeah disconnect is one lightning I could see this happening where otherwise like if you really want to item lock like you've got frillish you've got badu um yeah it's interesting it just seems like a I don't know maybe like a league night deck more than yeah no I agree with you I just wanted to give it a shout out yeah it's always worth highlighting item lock cards for sure yeah for sure we got smooth over back and crow bat that's about all there is to say about that we'll potentially talk about it more when the next set comes out got a garbo with an ability box decks oh yeah it's not garbo toxins yeah I know metang deck's got a usable meta gross that that's really more of a buff to slow king than it is to metang but for three metals and a colorless metallic hammer does 150 and you may discard three metal energy from this pokemon to have the attack to 150 more damage so slow king can do this with no discard and just do 300 whenever it wants to or your or your metang deck can discard discard three metals and do 300 if you really wanted to do that yeah I know it's interesting like you you say okay I'm discarding three metal oh I don't have three metal oh well so you don't need to fulfill the attack condition to get that it's it's similar to um wellspring macro coupon with the terror crystal to where you do as much of the cost as you can and then you do get the bonus effect because you have fulfilled it so you know the card is designed with the idea that you're going to have three metals attached to your pokemon and therefore you would have to discard them but slow king says yeah I kind of break the rules and do whatever I want and the pokemon devs say okay cool we're fine with that yeah and yeah I'm hopeful that's looking is better um not in this set but the next set we get it's it's getting there it's getting there man it's gonna be like the zorak box of this format where like it gets a couple pieces every set and people are like maybe it's this time maybe maybe the promised time has come for us we just need a twin energy yeah that would be good to have some way to accelerate besides this or even like double rainbow would be so good for that for that like you have wonder energy but yes just just something something um neck card is patrat which is our next basic like silver bullet counter slash tech card with the watchful eye ability if this pokemon is in play you and your opponent can't move damage counters to another pokemon so they said battle cage was not enough to stop monkey dory let's see if this works yeah yeah and it's better than battle cage in some ways like it's active like you don't have to you know stadiums are always just going to be able to be countered this you'd have to knock out some other way so that has that going for it um the card i'm probably most excited about for this set uh special red card um we finally have a comeback mechanic coming back to the pokemon cgg and i'm really excited about that uh it says you can only play this card if your opponent has three or less price cards remaining your opponent shuffles their hand and puts it to the bottom of the deck and then your opponent draws three cards so is it the most powerful like hand disruption ever no but it's at least better than something or nothing rather um and i mean the cool thing about it i like is that you can kind of play around it like you can choose when you allow this to trigger um and allows a little bit higher level gameplay like if you're playing dragapult you don't have to take that knockout that puts you down to two prices you can just kind of build up damage and um basically take all your price cards at once or something like that huh i like that so what you just told me is dragapult got better uh yeah i mean i'm not going to pretend like but other decks can do the same thing too sure you know sure like the big the one concern i would have would be that it also promotes dust noir as a card whether it be with dragapult or maybe like the jealous and dust noir decks you're item locking somebody you then have the ability to proactively put your opponent to three or fewer prize cards or what else would i play a star me dust nor as an example so you're just sniping things off your opponent's field you like board wipe them and set them to three cards now there's a risk involved with that because you're giving your opponent prize cards obviously but now you do have the ability to fully disrupt your opponent while also bossing something up and that was impossible before i think i guess maybe the balancing act with it is that playing the card doesn't do anything for you as a benefit it's purely to disrupt your opponent which is why we've only seen people play one copy so far and it's mostly seemed to be something where people are more so concerned about alakazam than anything else yeah because yeah yeah um big catch net another item card where it's super rod but only for water pokemon and water energy actually it's better super rod this is um because you can get up to three water pokemon and three basic water energy oh wow and shuffle them on your deck so like water types eating really good there yeah like you don't have to play sacred ash anymore you help screen i guess 100 just play big catch net i'm trying to think i don't like there are no really other water decks right now right frost yeah like mega frost last mega star me those kind of things but those are like but they don't really care about recovery you don't need to get a lot of pokemon back so yeah so it's gotta it's got it's just a greninja thing yeah we have a book of transformation which i think is a really interesting and cool card um similar to like swoop teleporter um or thornton back in the day um it's combined with like puzzle of time yeah so it has the mechanic of you have to play two at the same time to get the effect it's an item card um and it says choose a basic pokemon in your discard file and switch it with one of your basic pokemon and play any attached cards damage counters special conditions turns in play and any other effects remain on the new pokemon so um similar yeah to like thornton and i think this will see some play at some point in like a terror box build i'd be very surprised but like the noctowl engine you have access to be able to get this um and kind of surprise your opponent by getting back like a nice attacker that allows you to take a big shot big one shot or something like that um i don't know it could be it's not bad that's what i'm saying is sure the mechanics really powerful and will it like change how we play pokemon moving forward probably not too much but it's memorable and it should be played at some point no but i like i really do like the idea of something like this with noctowl because then you can play a terror box deck where you do only have one ofs on a lot of your attackers and you have the ability at some point to swap one of them out for something else with this even if you only play two copies of this card in your deck you just go noctowl for them swap them out and you're good to go um or you can like get the meowth or the fez off your bench if you did want to play this in something like uh dragapult or zorark and you did have to use fez or meowth you then can use this and get that thing off your bench swap it with a dreepy or a zurua or darumaka or zekrom or something just you're cleaning up your board which is something that is sorely missed in my opinion in this format like with the lack of toro lack of penny your only real way to clean up your board is with either qian pao or committing your a spec to play scoop out cyclone this card has a lot of potential the problem is that the cost for use is that you either have to be a tarot deck that plays noctowl or you have to have the hand filtration that comes from playing something like zorark or dracloak which are just harder to come by a lot of times or it's really just something where you're committing a lot of deck space or committing to playing a specific archetype if you really want to utilize the card yeah for sure next up is the kind of gimmick of the set where they give us this one-off mechanic that we may never see again and that is in the form of an interesting pair of stadiums where we have prism tower it says once during each player's turn that player may discard two cards from their hand and if they do they draw one which isn't good but it's also not bad like something somewhere along the line pretty neutral utilize this like i think somebody in my league was saying they want to play with this so sure yeah exactly Exactly, or oh My gosh, there's something else I was thinking of that could use this It'll come back to me. But the card that it is intended to combo with this with hyper rogue and Floet Spoilers for anybody that has not played legends EA that was interested in doing so This this happens in the game, but you can play this card only if prism tower is in play However, you can play this card even if prism tower was played to this turn and it says each mega Floet EX and plague it's 150 HP and we didn't even read mega Floet because even with this buff that card is not good It's also it's got the same like issue that a lot of reactive stadiums do like you mentioned with battle cage when we're talking about A second ago your front just bumps this like you committed two cards to get this into play and your apprentice is cool. No You just kind of they just go on about their turn Hopefully we see something like there was what was it back in the day? We had like a Pokemon that if it was in play, you couldn't change out the stadium. It's not still legal. It's a lunatone I know there's a it was a lunatone. It may be a baby but the the whole idea of having evolving stadium cards or like paired stadium cards, I think is really interesting and Unfortunately, this might be the only time we ever see it But I think that this has a lot of potential and I think is a better And it's a more interesting way of utilizing stadiums than take stuff that we've seen recently and it's infinitely more Interesting than something like chaotic swell like that should like probably the this the last time that we had an interesting stadium card where when you had the reversible ones like parallel city or What was the other one called like chaotic dimension or something like that Yeah Going back to the lunatone the one you're thinking of Prevents effects of stadiums on your Pokemon if there's a slow rock and play and it's a it's a g-regulation card It's not an obsidian flames. No, it's um Copper Raja, that's right There is a copper Raja that is legal that prevents things from stadiums from being discarded but then if you but it's only when it's active because it's something that you can utilize with neutralization zone, but the Oh, yeah, I like that. Okay, you're hyper rogue and flow out is totally useless if copper Raja is your active Pokemon, but Copper Raja could keep your stadium safe Yeah, I guess if you could do like move the damage from the copper Raja to the flow and then heal it off or something Like that. Yeah, I mean just in fairness like we're getting into the weeds. But yeah, yeah I'll tell you this flow it does Real quick 250 HP basics of 400 HP with the stadium in play Which is not nothing just also not something because they'll bump it and it'll go back to 250 but gentle light for a psychic feel 30 from each Pokemon or Three psychic energy for eternity bloom that is 200 You may search for up to four basic psychic energy Attach them to your bench Pokemon in any way you like then shuffle your deck and like you've got a mega that Doesn't really do anything for one energy and then for three types specific energy only does 200 damage And that's just not good enough for me like even with the energy acceleration Like if I really wanted to accelerate psychic energies I think I would just play mega Gardevoir Because then you have a usable one hit ko attack that kind of gets teed up off of the energy acceleration that that card provides And it's got more HP. It's very underwhelming attack wise like you would think with how much this thing so I've been playing Pokemon champions a fair bit and Mega flowette has an attack called light of ruin, which is just like a delete a Pokemon button She and I think it would be interesting if this had had something that kind of reference to that Instead and maybe the card like obviously if the card was just Oh delete your opponent's Pokemon it would definitely see more play than do 200 and accelerate some energy, but That leaves the last card that we wanted to talk about So we've been getting some more special energy as type specific special energy with each of these sets the fire and water energies are not But the metal energy magnet metal energy to be specific Provides a metal as long as it is attached to a Pokemon and the metal Pokemon this card is attached to has a no retreat cost So float stone on an energy. That's really good. We saw this was psychic back in the day And it was really impactful in that format. So I imagine Metals kind of weak right now. We haven't really seen a whole lot of metal decks do well But like giving more tools to metal should help and we'll see if this actually makes a difference I mean metal historically all the Pokemon have super high retreat costs. So this should help with some maneuverability So hopefully that's the case for sure They're definitely pretty big and I guess just real quick because we did have some pitch-black cards revealed already there is a metal Pokemon that this would pair really well with and I thought was Interesting enough to talk about that's Bastiodon So 160 HP stage two has that for retreat cost on a metal Pokemon So your magnet metal energy would give this guy free retreat and has the ancient bulwark ability that while this Pokemon's on your bench Prevent all damage done to your Pokemon not just your bench Pokemon all your Pokemon buy attacks from your opponents Pokemon have two or fewer Energy cards attached that seems pretty good. Honestly. Yeah, I kind of like that like you have and there's handheld fan still in format You have crushing hammers and enhanced hammer like you could probably make the like the way that stuff is built right now There's not a whole lot of energy acceleration, you know, like ogre pawn, but then this thing's still it's like really hard to kill with Right granted and a lot of it's hard to knock out the ogre pawn back But you know, well, but this thing doesn't have to be this has to be on your bench to be in effect So your attackers just kind of go into town while Bastiodon is just preventing your opponent from doing anything And you look at a lot of the popular decks right now like Dragapult two energies and Cynthia's Garchomp two energies Megastar me normally has one energy make a frost last make a low punny normally one energy and make a low punny has a Short attack so I can go through this a little different Yeah, what? Else what else what else I put a festival lead one energy I mean most most things are one or two energies right now with the exception of like the ogre pawns or crustle, right? Yeah, and crustle. I think you can there's enough like the There's there's some shirt attacker I'm sure there is I can't We just don't have a lot of steel don't just go aggro Bastiodon there. Yeah, there you go Bastion I mean, honestly, I like this card a lot It sticks it's a fossil historically one of the worst mechanics and Pokemon. Oh Oh, it's funny you say that I know we we normally don't talk about sets until they're about to come out in English But they also revealed the fossil excavation site stadium that once during each player's turn that player may search their deck for up to two trainers With antique in their name and put them onto their bench then shuffle their deck and so all of the fossils have antique in Their name so you can just Cholera's for a stadium to go find your armor fossil immediately and put it on your bench and get the energy to retreat Best hit on later. Yeah. Yeah, you can go find your magnet energy put it slap it right on your armor fossil right away there's Fossils in general. I think have the ability to do something now that something like this exists like we saw that back with Was the the lab card that kind of made fossils via my center alone? No, there was another Maybe I'm thinking of a supporter. Maybe it wasn't a stadium. There's like a supporter. Sure. Yeah I mean, I know that that's like directly put the the fossil guy into play but still like just fossils need help especially in the era where like decks can just slot in Bidu or frillish and Item lock you to prevent. Yeah, let's get around the play. That's nice So neat cards some definite some interesting stuff coming out in future sets But we will get back to pitch black at a later date Hmm and in the meantime, we need to get back to the standard format But before we do John does have a Blaine's quiz show for us this week and so let's hit that up As per usual I have no idea we have no idea what the scores are I am woefully unprepared at this time Not always sorry, sorry, sorry I'll accept as usual Okay We're not even entirely sure that it's John's turn to be doing this to be honest with any 90% sure All right, Aaron. I'm bringing back my favorite segment of Blaine's quiz show The one where we do you're gonna ask me freaking card prices, aren't you? I am gonna ask you I made it a little like more fair and say okay just because it's been a while I'm gonna go over how to play players. We've given three multiple-choice questions. If a player is stumped They're allowed to ask for one hint at any time Claire answers all three questions without the use of a hint a bonus point will be awarded And yep, I'm bringing back pokey mark my favorite one. So sorry for that. I'm not getting a bonus point. I'll tell you that much All right, I have a couple questions pertaining to mostly new stuff What is the most expensive card from perfect order? Is it mega hyper rare? Zygarde Secret illustration rare mega Zygarde and that's mega Zygarde, obviously Secret illustration rare me out the X or a secret illustration rare mega star me Okay, it's hyper rare the gold one. Yeah, okay I know it's not star me and if it is one of those I guards is probably gonna be the gold one So that means that it's in my mind. It's either the gold Zygarde or it's meowth And I feel like people historically don't like gold cards Maybe that's not true with the mega Pokemon, but I honestly haven't looked at them at all So I'm gonna go with me out because that cards good. Yeah And it is a fan favorite. You are correct. Mega me out is like 175. I think Mega mega. Yeah, mega me out. You know something I get to get to max me out. Yeah, I got the long Yeah, no, and then I I don't know what the mega hyper rare It's over a hundred but it's not significant. It's okay pretty far down from there. All right, so one point for Aaron I'm just easing you and building your confidence before I shatter it. Don't worry Next question, which of the following cards has the highest market price? So I got a couple playable cards in this format and I figured head does Aaron know the price of anything anymore is It pheasant nippity EX from ascended heroes mega frost last EX That one's also from ascended heroes reverse hollow done sparse from journey together or Blaziken EX from training together. Okay. Can you tell me are these are all for just base art, right? Yeah, everything everything except for the Is base art. I know people were freaking out about done sparse because it's up to like $4. That is the one card I'm sure of the price on in this list Last time I looked at mega frost last because I still haven't gotten one I think it was like a $5 card, but that was a month ago month or two ago So maybe the price has probably changed since then. I can't imagine that it's gone up pheasant nippity I know is On the downturn like it was at one point. It was like 10 bucks, but then ascended heroes came out and it did drop I Feel like says the Debbie's price is just kind of Continued to decline as it's been printed in more and more products like between the trainer toolkit and that's one drag up all deck And then a reprint here Blaziken Blaziken was like a $1 card for a while, but now it's actually seeing play the drag up hold So it might be up there too but I have no clue would it be at I know you threw done sparse in here because it's like the red herring but I also don't think that it's the most expensive because it is like last the image I saw it was like four dollars Maybe four dollars and twenty five cents and I feel like at least one of these exes has to be like a five dollar card Currently, I just don't know which one It's not pheasant dippity though, so either frostless or blaze again, it's a tough one Blaziken's been out for longer people open more journey together set was smaller. So it was easier to get Yeah, we'll pull the we're gonna lock in frost last year mega frost last ex final answer show me the money You are Correct. Oh dang. I Got two periods there. Sorry. I'm Two times two two dollar signs. Yeah, so editing budgets gone down in our absence. I'm sorry Yeah, it's very close. I picked all these because they are pretty close But mega frost last creeped up there I think just because the print run for a set of heroes It's not like there's not enough product out there But it is like just hard to find stuff right now and mega frost last is a pretty playable card And this that's just so big like even if you open an EX it like there's just a billion EX's in the set That's true. Yeah, it is and you get a bunch of junky ones from like the battle decks and stuff It's kind of filling it all up But yeah, so two for two so far, let's see if you can keep it going What is the least expensive full art trainer from the mega evolution block? So with the mega evolution block, we got the new ultra rare like full art looking trainers I wanted to know I was gonna do the most expensive one, but that one's pretty easy. It's pokey pad So I wanted to hit you up with what is the least expensive one at the moment? This is just TCG player market price. This one's pretty tough. So I Don't think I can get this right without the hint. So I'll go ahead and utilize that. Sure. It is a tool card Okay, so counter gain or sacred charm. I was gonna say to be honest with you I didn't even know blowtorch had a full art item I was like you just made that up that doesn't exist And I figured glass trumpet was probably pretty up there too But like blowtorch was higher on my list in terms of thinking it would be cheaper So it's not the cheapest though sacred charm is pretty niche But so is counter gain counter gains have been printed before it has like a gold version as well I think I don't I think sacred charm is unique in the scarlet violet block I don't think it's really like a reprint of anything. It's kind of like a permanent buffer piece if I remember correctly Are you able to tell me what set those two cards came out in sure I can look that up for you I don't think that thanks. I mean, I might make a difference. It's like sacred sacred charm is perfect order. I think right? I'm pretty sure it's always weird with the Flower ones so sacred charm is phantasmal flames. Okay, and And Counter Gain. That should also be Phantasmal Flames, no? Ascended Heroes. Oh, ooh. Ascended Heroes, least expensive. So Counter Gain would actually potentially get a price buff for being an Ascended Heroes. It's like the Ascended Heroes tax that you put on the card. And Phantasmal Flames kind of sucks as a set. So we'll go with Sacred Charm. And you almost got there. Getting technical issues. You almost got there. It was Counter Gain. And the difference is like three pennies, so you shouldn't feel that. Actually, Counter Gain, it goes, so this is an order of least to highest expensive. So Counter Gain, Glass Trumpet, Sacred Charm, Blowtorch. Blowtorch is the most expensive one of these four? Well, it is 75 cents. I might go pick up a play set of Blowtorches. At some point, that card seems like it could see play, to be honest with you. I was thinking about it the other day. With Delphox or with something like, you know, like if Fire Decks become popular, like if Saberledge ever gets back to the point where, you know, it's pretty good. I could see where that, I mean, it's. And like with Heroes Cape seeing play? I mean, like you're looking for a means to. Yeah, I think now is the time to pick up your Full Art Trainers, because it's pretty low. The Ultra Balls right now are $8 a piece. That's pretty nice. Let me see. Yeah, honestly, I had no idea that Blowtorch had a Full Art Item card. That's so interesting. Yeah, Sacred Ash and. Yeah, discard a tool or special energy. Like that's not a bad card. No, that's solid. Like having to discard a fire energy is kind of eh, but it definitely could be worse. Sometimes it's the worse side. Sometimes, for sure. Especially like you said with Saberledge, absolutely. And then being able to get rid of. Well, Saberledge doesn't really care about special energies though, that's the problem. But I could see it being Tech and Dragapult, to be honest with you. But even currently, like to discard a Mist Energy, discard a Hero's Cape off of something. Just because you don't have enough energy to really do that? Probably, probably. That's the thing where it's like the lack of Super Rod. I don't want to. Not really wanting to play another Knight Stretcher really makes it more difficult. But we do have Los Angeles Regionals coming up this weekend, John. Yeah. And I didn't get a chance to kind of say my piece about this format because I did miss the, we missed the week before Prague. I missed last week. Not a huge fan. However, I acknowledge that it just is the state that Pokemon's in right now. And not being a big Dragapult fan is kind of like the place where you know that you're kind of lower on the totem pole than the people who are fans of the deck, right? Yeah, I mean, it's a fair opinion, I'd say. The intriguing thing or interesting thing to me is that even though Dragapult is a pro, it's not quite at like Regidrago or Lugia levels of dominance. Even when you do pool all of their meta percentages together. But the fact that you have to pool three or four different builds of the deck together to reach near those numbers is something that is pretty interesting to me. So you're kind of choosing what you're teching for and you do have a pretty varied and different matchup spread depending on how you want to build that deck. So like when we do look at Prague results, we have Matej who won the event with a Dragapult to Dunsparce, choosing to exclude all other two prizers from the deck. Tord with a straight Dragapult that just wants to be as consistent as possible and just kind of come out, had played four Rare Candy, said I'm shooting for a wombo combo turn two Crispin Candy, Dragapult. Let's win the game from there because turn two Phantom Dive is broken. And then the other kind of version that has cropped up in this format is Dragapult Blaziken that we saw also make top eight in that event. And you still can never really count out Dragapult Dusknoir that I think coming out of Prague is actually better positioned than it was going into Prague where you have the means to generate swing turns against some of these decks where like Matej's Dragapult to Dunsparce list played Hero's Cave as the A-spec. And you need a way to kind of, you can't mitigate that with Dusknoir, but it puts you in a position where you can take a multi-prize turn that your opponent may otherwise think is out of reach because you have the ability to pop a Dusknoir and set things up that way. The other thing that you're looking at there is the deck, there was another like surprise deck that popped up from what I can tell online been gaining some traction and that is this Mega Lopunny Mega Froslass deck that just runs like a 4-3 to Dunsparce line or 4-3-1 because there is a Dunsparce EX. But then you're just playing very efficient stage one Mega Pokemon in Lopunny and Froslass. And you're playing four copies of Wally's Compassion to just say, I'm gonna win my Dragapult matchup because they can never knock out my Mega Pokemon. So they hit you for 200, you heal all that damage off, you bounce your one energy back to your hand, you reattach it and you just keep going. And what does the Dragapult player do if they're not playing Dusknoir, right? Like maybe you can move over some damage counters with a Monkey Dory, but you know, 330 is still like pretty insurmountable at that point. Even 310 on the Mega Froslass is just really difficult for Dragapult to hit without the inclusion of Dusknoir. So like this is an interesting deck, I'd be intrigued to see how well it's going to do heading into this weekend. But I think if people are unprepared for it, it does have the tools it needs to potentially come out on top because you do have answers to, you have answers to Cornerstone, you have answers to Crustle, you have answers to non-Dusknoir Dragapult variants, you have four missed energies, so you have answers to Alakazam. I can see Festival Lede being a deck that could give you a hard time potentially. Like if they do have a turn. I think it's still hard for them to reach that. You know, they have the one turn where yeah, they can do the wombo of. Like Bangle plus Blackmail. Yeah. But like, it's hard to keep doing that. Right. You can just heal off the damage with the Wall-E's. Yeah, for sure. So like this is something where, you know, at the beginning of this format, you saw a lot of people playing Mega Froslass with Mega Starmie. Mm-hmm. And now we've seen a migration to, hey, that's kind of inefficient and Mega Starmie either isn't as good or is better served being played with another deck like we did see it make top four being paired with Dusknoir in Prague, just not with Mega Froslass at the end of the day. And instead we're going to play this, the Dunsparce line. The Dunsparce is like, had the biggest glow up post rotation. I mean, the card that was always considered a subpar, substandard, not even really a draw engine coming into or at the close of the last format because we did have so many other powerful options in terms of supporters and everything. And now they just said, hey, we need to do something if we want to keep things going. And especially if you're taking turns where you're playing like non-draw supporters with this deck, like you so often are with either Hilda or Wally trying to get things going. And like the Dunsparce is just the thing that keeps fueling you over and over and over again. And we've seen the other interesting thing like not in this kind of mega, like stage one mega list, but with the Dragonbolt list that are utilizing Risky Ruins. I think the Dunsparce, and even, so I saw the Mega Starmie list that made top four. It did not play the Dunsparce. I've been actually playing off and on for the past week, a modified version of that where I did put a 2-2 Dunsparce line in purely to have the recursion of Risky Ruins damage to be able to produce damage counters to move over to the opponent's board. And I think that that's a feature of the card that you have access to with Risky Ruins. It's just a really interesting combo that uniquely is opened up by the inclusion of the Dunsparce. Yeah, I think it is. And it just kind of, that speaks to a lot of, you don't know, like there's so much unexplored about this format and going into this regionals. Like we've only had, we've had one major, but post-rotation always feels weird. Just figuring out what's actually viable, you know, we're leaning on like the Dunsparce. Like we didn't, it wasn't a viable draw engine. We just had better options with Golden Go, with, you know, so many other like better, like drawing decks and better supporters. But now we just don't have those same things going for us anymore. So we cling on to stuff that was seen as not so good before, like Festival Lead or Dunsparce. And now it's like, these are broken because you just don't have the power. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, like that gets paired with the Dunsparce more frequently, but still, like, I mean, it got some new tools. It lost a lot of public enemies, like namely Gardevoir. And you're always been playing multiple battle cage to try to short up your Dragonbolt matchup anyway. So just these, especially the one prize decks, like the lack of Gardevoir, the lack of abusable Monkey Dory damage, and really the lack of Iono is what has kind of opened the door for these one prize decks to kind of come back into the format. But the weird thing is they all, they have slightly different matchup spreads, but they all kind of feel like they're, you know, if you go to the ice cream section of the supermarket, right? You look at the cartons of ice cream that you have there and you have like home style vanilla and vanilla and vanilla bean and French vanilla. And at the end of the day, they're all still vanilla ice cream. And that's kind of what the one prize decks feel like to me, whether you're playing like Honchkrow or Festival Lead or Alakazam. They all just are hoping that they can beat Dragapult and they kind of do beat up on a lot of the other multi-prize decks, but you're just praying that your vanilla ice cream gets you over the line in a 30% Dragapult field. And I don't know if that's good enough. It's a lot harder. Well, it's just really hard to beat Dragapult as a one prize deck right now. Right. And especially if we see like, because Dragapult can pivot, right? Like, so, okay, now Festival Lead starts running Ravska. Okay, cool. Well, I'll just run Dragapult Dusknoir and be able to knock it out and pick your board apart. So it's just kind of like a chess game of trying to stay one step ahead of the Dragapult decks, how to beat them and all that kind of stuff. One other thing we didn't really talk about yet is the Ogrepon decks. There's Slopbox. I guess that's one way to, there's the Raging Bolt variant. I'm not big on Slopbox. The name is, we can just call it Ogrepon. I know that's like the colloquial accepted way to call it that, but I'm fine with just like Ogrepon box slash the Slopbox and I guess rely more on Kangaskhan and that kind of thing. But, and then we have like Raging Bolt and then the Meganium and Arboliva paired with Tealmask is another one that's been pretty popular and pretty successful online. At least early on in the format, I think it was probably the most popular it was and it's kind of falling off a little bit. It looks like it didn't do super well in Prague. There was maybe one or two that made top cut from what I remember. Yeah, yeah. Magdalena, I think. One of them made Ace, I believe. But what are your thoughts on that deck moving into Los Angeles? You think now it's gone like a full cycle and we're back to it being good again or is it still gonna struggle into the metagame that we're seeing? The, I'm not a fan of the big basics decks like any of them, whether it's Raging Bolt. Like I know you've got Ian Robb championing the fact that Raging Bolt beats Dragapult and that's all well and good, but I don't see, you don't beat most other things and that's the problem. Like it's got the same problems that Raging Bolt has always had only it feels even less consistent than it used to. Especially like the lack of Nest Ball is really what kills these decks for me and it makes it so hard to set up consistently. Like the Arboliva one is a little bit different because you do have bug catching set because your deck is pure grass type. But when you look at the Mega Kangaskhan like the true big basics box or the Raging Bolt, like it's not Sada that I think kills that deck for me, it's the lack of Nest Ball. And just, I don't know, I tried, I've tried to play a decent amount of Raging Bolt and it just feels so inconsistent. Like you'll either have a game where you just blow your opponent up and you run them off the board and then the next game you open with a lot of Yas and five energies and you just draw a pass so you lose. And there's not really, it doesn't seem like there's an in-between because everything is so slimmed down like this list from Maeve Broussasco that got sixth place in Prague plays two Cyrano, one Lily, one Cypher Maniac and four Ultra Ball. And yes, there are three raw copies of Meowth to kind of go along with that but you're just praying that you draw into these cards and otherwise, like I said, you just draw a passing or hoping that you happen to have a Kangaskhan to run errand with or a Teal Mask Ogre Pawn that you have your nine grass energies and you're just hoping to Ogre Pawn Chain your way into a game. And maybe that gets you there sometimes but if you give any of the single prize decks a turn where you're not taking a knockout with a deck like this, you just lose. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough to keep up on the format as the big single prize decks do. I think that covers most everything, Aaron. I wanted to do some predictions before we end up in the pod. I had five questions and I've already filled out my answers to them and I'll say them whenever we got through it. Real quick. We do have. Yeah, go for it. I would be remiss too because you asked me a question before we started recording and then I would be remiss to not mention Krustle as a resident Krustle hater. Krustle did very, very well in Braug. It was a great call for that tournament. I do not think it's a good call for this weekend. Okay. I think people will be more prepared for it. I think you'll see a rise in something like variants of Dragapult, like the Dunsparce variant, we'll see more play. We'll see Blaziken lists that are willing to put in something like baby Blaziken as an example. So you have a means of getting around the Krustle and just, it just, you'll beat up on a lot of players still, but we're just seeing people being more willing to tech for Krustle because even though it is a low percentage play, it has had enough success that I think that you'll see some make a deep run and we'll probably see at least one in top 16 still, but I don't think any of them are going to make cut. And then the last thing, unless you had, did you have anything you wanted to say about Krustle? No, I mean, I agree with all that. I had a generational run and now people, the same kind of, you know, circle of Decidueye that other people have talked about. Same kind of like, you play the deck, people tech for the deck, you don't play the deck, nobody techs for the deck, so you play the deck and all that kind of stuff. Exactly. And then the last thing, John asked me for my opinion on Froslass decks. So not Mega Froslass, but things like Froslass Monkey Dory or Grimmsnarl Froslass coming in to this format and they just feel a little bit too slow to me. Like you don't have quite enough turns. It's weird because things do feel so clunky and inconsistent in this format, but I think this is where the loss of Iono is really felt. Like you don't have the means to disrupt your opponent enough to get yourself over the line. Like you're normally a turn, maybe a turn and a half, like a turn plus a between turns phase or a Pokemon checkup phase that you're just short on like one ping. you need to really close out a game. And it's also again, like even though grim snarl as an example didn't really play a ton of Pokemon search cards before. It just feels like you're not getting your basics out enough when I when I do try to play this deck. I mean, Spike with Jim is still broken, still probably one of the best stadium cards ever printed, you get kind of collateral to by the fact that ogre pond decks are really popular. So you are almost forced to just disregard that what like 1112 card package that you would have in your deck from your like 322 line plus four. So 11 car package 322 line plus four stadiums just totally useless against those ogre pond decks for the most part, because you don't have I don't know, like that was the gameplay before if you played against something like raging bolter Darabox, you mostly want to play for us as monkey Dory anyway, but you were okay putting a grim song in play and letting it get knocked out because you knew that that meant you opened a window where you could I don't know your opponent to a lower hand size faster. And maybe you could close out a game with a grim snarl at the end of the game once your opponent goes down to one prize card, and you don't have I don't know anymore. Like maybe this deck gets is something worth revisiting once special red card comes out, maybe. But even then, I think you'd be hard pressed to see it be a good play. That's fair. And it's like same thing for the like frostless monkey Dory in general, like you could just do better things with frostless I think. Or better things with your snow run, right? Like that dadan sparse mega low pony mega frostless deck. It seems kind of like a flavor of the month thing currently, but it also seems much better positioned than anything that's trying to utilize freezing shroud. Yeah, and it's you also lost TM devolution with rotation. Yep. So that kind of limits your ability to tackle the stage two evolving decks like Dragonfall primarily. And yeah, it's just tough. Like it's tough to soldier on as a warrior for grim snarl or for frostless monkey Dory. And yeah, I think we've seen that in the tournament results. And we've seen that just kind of how it feels to play those two decks. So we've talked through most everything let's just end it with some predictions what dragapult variant will place the highest in your opinion, I will. What are people going to play? I guess is the question. I do think the Dunsparce will see an uptick, but I still think it'll probably be the lowest played dragapult variant in terms of meta percentage and with crustal kind of being on the what I would expect to be the downtrend. I think that means that it will not necessarily be as successful. I think we also could see people playing tool scrapper to mitigate things like the hero's cape. Easy one card inclusion for knocks out both crustal and this decks a specs which is huge can also collateral things like Garchomp or random handheld fans that people might start including what can fit that in the best though. I'm not a fan of the Blaziken deck. I know a lot of people like it. I it's maybe I just haven't put enough time into it. I do the thing I do like about it is that it lets you more cleanly fit rare candy into your deck. Where like if you're playing the straight dragapult list, I know toward played like for rare candy and his dragapult deck. But the weird thing there is that you're still hoping to get a bunch of drag cloaks in play. And once you do that, you just have a bunch of dead cards and you can't do anything with them besides ultra ball them away. Whereas if you're playing dust noir, in particular, like dust, or is the best utilizer of rare candy between all these archetypes, and then plays again is like number two on that list. I think I would go with I'm gonna go with dust nor I think that the explosive price potential is really useful against a lot of these mirror matches. It lets you set up multi price turns against a lot of other decks that you otherwise wouldn't be able to. I kind of wanted to go with straight pole because I think that there's an angle where between like risky runs monkey Dory and then you could like I don't think anybody's playing it right now like the toward play Breyer. No, I think that there's a world where you could actually fit Breyer into this deck and do something kind of cheeky there. But then you're like in the position where Breyer really almost fits better in the dust or variant anyway, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can control what your opponent gets up on. But you can like run a one one knock towel and the like straight pole. So like, that's true. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's not like, I mean, I don't know. It's lots, lots to discover this format. I also wrote down dragapult dust nor before I asked the questions I came up with my answers. So I won't change that. Next question will be how high will a frost last deck played? So we both weren't well, you weren't too high on it. And I'm not too high on it either. But you know, people will still be loyal to those two decks, I guess three decks, we want to include the mega frostless. I'm talking more. Okay, the freezing shroud ones. So I got top 128 on that, man. Okay. All right. No, no, actually, no, that's not that's not fair. Grimmsnarl made top 16. Still, this is that Prague will go with, I'll give it a top 32. Somebody will make some money with a frost. You copied my answer. Mine too. I swear I didn't. Did Aaron did Aaron read down all the same? I'll come back to that one. What will be the highest placing one prize deck? All right, my I'll say mine out loud this way. Maybe you'll pick something else. Just know that I'm really high on festival lead going into this tournament. It didn't do like crazy, crazy well. And I'm actually not it's not true. It did though. That was the problem going into but it didn't make it didn't make top cuts. Yeah. So I think it kind of out of sight out of mind with that people are prepping for stuff. They're not going to think it's a test against festival lead. And it's just a really strong deck right now. It's probably the strongest of the one prize decks in my mind. Yeah, so I'm going to stay with festival. I'm going to stick with what I have felt like, even though I made my whole vanilla ice cream analogy. I still do think in my opinion, there is a better one prize deck than all of the other ones. And that, in my opinion, so far has not changed in this format. That's Alakazam. That's right. Do you think you have room to tech in that deck? And I think that we will see that this weekend. In my opinion, if you're playing Alex in this weekend, play a handheld fan. Unless festival lead players start playing tool scrapper, which they probably should. But unless they do, you can almost solo that matchup with handheld fan, because you deny them their second attack. As soon just by having it as I can't one shot you. Like, correct, because you're you're not the X. That's, that's cute. I like that. Okay, what you can also find them for crustal. The thing I've seen people going around with is the electromagnetic sonar DNA and recurring enhanced hammer because most crystal belts are pure special energy right now. So you just get rid of all their missed energies and then blow everybody up. It's pretty nice. All right. What big basic deck will do the best? None of them. None of them. That's crazy. If I had to pay will be played, Aaron. So they are all just they're just like the same thing, though, man. They're literally all the same. They're all the same deck with like a couple of different attackers put in like I'm just trying to score. Holy cow. Did you know Hops Trevenant made top 64? Yeah, I saw that. That's crazy. I'm going to vote for Hops Trevenant. It's not. That's my big basic deck. No, I is Tarabox considered a big basics deck. Sure, we'll give it that. Okay, I'll go with that. I think that that's better than the pure like I'm playing for me out than for Kangaskhan and hoping that that wins me a game. But somehow. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I'm not I'm not high on those. Those those just feel bad. Like if you miss one turn or one action like you with an energy or something like that, the game feels so bad. I'm picked Meganium Ogrepawn. I'm still high on that deck. Okay, so I didn't consider that a big basics deck. Okay. Yeah. So I guess it's not entirely if I guess we're modified big basics kind of slots into the Ogrepawn hype right now. But that's that's my pick. I like that deck a lot. I've seen it. It has options. It has some flexibility with the Arboliva if you're running that. Yeah, it's not bad. Oh, you're not hip on it, John. The new tech is you drop your Arboliva and you played Hydrapple. That's what I've been seeing this past week. No, it's just something where. So what I've seen is people have dropped Unfair Stamp. They swapped to Hero's Cape and you play Hydrapple. So you have a I think it's four hundred thirty HP Ogrepawn essentially. Like you spread all the energy on your bench Ogrepawns and then Hydrapple just like wall up things to death. And the nice thing about these decks in particular is you can play an energy switch and a Tapu Bulu from oh my gosh, what set is it in? Might be Destined Rivals if I remember correctly. It does like 220 for four grass so you can KO crustles with it. Oh, that is pretty nice. Does Megiddo not KO a crustle? No, it does 140. Oh, that's stupid. That's so annoying. I'm going to fact check myself to make sure I'm not putting my foot in my mouth. But yeah, you're good. All right. So that's all of the questions I had. We agreed on a lot of it. The last one I have actually I do is pick a player to do well. It's like who do I want to pick? You go first, Aaron, and then I'll try to think of one. OK, pick a player for this week. I have no idea who's going to this event. I think I'm going to go Andrew Hedrick, actually. That's not a bad one. I will. I will assume that he's going. I will assume he's playing Dragapult and I will put him on the Dustmore variant of Dragapult. And therefore I'm going to kind of bolster my other prediction and say, hey, this is where you got to be. Like I'm probably going to just slot in Ian Robb. I think he's due for regionals performance this season. He's playing he's high on Raging Bolt, man, I don't know. I don't hate that deck. I think I think he'll do OK with it. Like it's not in the worst spot. He'll just hit Dragapult all day and be fine. OK, I'll take your word for it. I'll take your word for it. But we'll find out. We'll talk all about it next week. I'm excited to hopefully get more back in the swing of things as we lead up to NAIC and get more content out there, get some more discussion going. I will hopefully have some retro stuff for you guys in the next few weeks. We've got LA and then we only got really one more NA regional until the end of the season. So we'll have a bit of a lull between NAIC and Worlds, as we always do. So we'll have a lot of time to fill and we might take a break. I started a new job, so that's also factoring into stuff. So thank you for your patience as always. I know it's not always been a reliable podcast, but we do appreciate you guys listening and we appreciate any feedback or support you guys give us. It really means a lot to us. Well said, John. I don't know what else I could add to that. On a non-podcast related note, I did want to call out. John and I are both friends with Kyle Sablehouse, and I just wanted to say his wife had to have a surgery a couple of weeks ago and has unfortunately suffered a setback. And I wanted to just reach out and request. I know this may not really land with a lot of people, but if you have the financial means to do so and you do have it kind of within your heart to do so, they do have a meal train website set up to help them while his wife is recovering from the surgery. Kyle and Caitlin have three, do they have four kids now? I believe only three children. Three or four. But great people. I'm sure everybody knows Kyle from casting major events. He's a great person. And as somebody who has had to deal with a lot of medical hardship within his family, I can only, I can really sympathize with what he's going through right now. So I would ask if you do have the ability to donate something, whether it's cash, or if you do happen to live nearby them, and you can literally drop off food for them, I'm sure that they would really appreciate it right now. I'll leave a link to their meal train website in the description of this episode and just ask maybe you check it out. But with that being said, if you do want to check out anything else from John and myself or the show, we will also have the links to all of our socials in the description of this episode. And as John said, we do have some retro card stuff coming up in the near future. The deck that I particularly wanted to highlight is from the 2008 era, and it is the Absol Glaceon lock deck. So if you want to maybe familiarize yourself with that a little bit, we'll go a little bit more in depth on that at some point here within the next episode or two. So look forward to that. And we'll be back with some LA results next week, hopefully. See y'all next week.