Episode 6: LAIC Meta Discussion with Michael Pramawat and Grafton Roll

Hello, and welcome back to the Battle Frontier podcast, where we aim to help you level up in your journey as a competitive Pokemon TCG player. I'm Aaron Curry. With me as always is my co-host, Jon Orgel, and tonight we also have two special guests with us. So Jon, why don't you go ahead and introduce our friends here? Sure. So I am happy to introduce Grafton Roll from Florida, and then Michael Pramawat, currently in Indiana. And we are switching it up a little bit, but I think for our first two guests, I am honored to have these two. They're longtime players. I know Grafton still plays. He just recently got top nine, or he got ninth at Baltimore Regionals. And then I know Pram, recently as NAIC, was still doing really well at the competitive scene, but has moved over to judging more and more. But I'm sure he could still hold his own against any of these other players in the arena. So it's just really good to have you guys on. And before I go any further, do you guys want to say a little bit about yourself, about your competitive history, anything like that? Grafton, go ahead. Yeah, sure. So I've been playing the game now for coming up on 20 years, and it's been a really good time. You know, I started with my family and continued with my brother and my dad playing for a number of years. I was fortunate enough in 2011 that I got third in Worlds and Seniors. That's like the big accomplishment. And then so far, the Masters career, just done a little bit here and there, got a top eight at EUIC, which funny enough, Pram knocked me out of. So, you know, good stuff there and got a couple of ninths under my belt, but haven't made like a big crack in Masters so far. But yeah, it's been playing for a long time. I really like playing off meta decks. It's kind of my thing. Yeah, Michael. Yeah, you know, I've also been playing for a long time, played, started playing when I was like around like 10 and I've been playing ever since. And you know, I've done pretty well. I won that EUIC that Grafton was talking about where I knocked him out. And then I also won seven regional championships and I'm second and third at Worlds. So yeah, I've just been playing a lot. And then this season, I'm just like trying to go and stuff like do some judging stuff. And it's been pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely interesting to see things from a different perspective. I know that, you know, I had taken a step away from the game for quite a bit of time just to finish up school, started my family and everything. And that definitely took a bit more of a front seat to playing Pokemon. And I've been fortunate enough now to have the free time and resources to be able to commit to kind of get back into it. So I'm really interested to see how your perspectives may have shifted throughout your time in the game as you've gone through all these various formats and kind of spanned the history of the game. As you said, Grafton, you've been playing for 20 years, Michael, you've been playing for over 20 years at this point. And we're going to come back to that a little bit because I do specifically want to ask how you've seen the game evolve and change as it's gone through the history that you've shared with it. But before we do that, we're going to jump into our weekly trivia segment that we like to call Blaine's Quiz Show. So here we have it. We're the way that we're going to structure this. There are questions for each of you. There are two individual questions. And then there is one shared question that will be kind of a lightning round tiebreaker if we absolutely need it. So that being said, our first question will be for both of you, but we're going to have Grafton answer this one first and then I know for other individual questions, Michael will answer first. So this first question is, what deck did the other guests play at NAIC last year? Grafton, do you have any idea what Michael played? I have no idea. I think I might know yours, but I'm not sure. I'm not even sure what I played at NAIC. Well, luckily for both of you, I do know the answer to this question on both of your behalves, but I can give a small hint to both of you. I think it'll help one of you more than the other, but I can tell you a type of basic energy that was featured in the other player's deck. Okay. So Grafton, Michael had fire energy featured in his deck. Okay. My first guess was Charizard. I'm going to go with Charizard. Okay. So we've got that locked in. Michael, Grafton played lightning energy in his deck. So I think you had an idea prior to me saying that. Yeah. It's out the window. Did he play Lost Box? Okay. Solid guess. Both of you had solid guesses. Unfortunately, you're both wrong. So Pram played Dragapult Charizard, primarily a Dragapult deck, but there was a little sprinkling of Charizard in there, and Grafton played Quad Iron Thorns. So I wasn't sure how plugged in you two were to each other's kind of Twitter sphere and the ongoings of that environment, but I know that I believe you both did make posts about this or maybe I'm totally imagining that Grafton did and I just knew what you played because I know you. Oh no, I did make a post. Yeah. And I played it. So it was a fun time. John came up with this next one. Maybe it'll be a little bit easier. Michael, you and Grafton both played Nightmarch to day two finishes in the 2016 World Championships. Which American player recorded the highest placement with the deck at sixth place? This player has called both Florida and Texas home. I got nothing. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Like I said, I thought that this was a rather hard question. Can I guess it? Oh, I'm sorry, Grafton. Oh, dang it, I was right. But the answer to that was Brad Curcio. And so Grafton, this should be about equal difficulty. You placed 11th in the 2017 European International Championship with a rather unique Zorak GX list featuring Sylvalli GX and Reggie Steele. What American player who also utilized Sylvalli and Reggie Steele placed second at this event? It's first name to come to mind, but I was, is it Sosa? Wasn't it Shemansky? Yeah, I was so close. I think Shemansky got third at that event or top four at that event. Yeah. Or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. And he, I think that was, he played. I think he lost to this player in top four, but this was Zachary Kreikler. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, man, we made it really difficult. I, I, I'm so sorry. Yeah. We've had, we've had a history of most of these questions actually being multiple choice, but when you get to this kind of minutiae, it makes it really hard to formulate other potential options to include as choices. Right. This one, John had this included as kind of a, just who can beat the other to the buzzer. I don't know how either of you are going to answer this question, to be fair, but we'll jump into it. The two of you both played against each other in top eight of the first ever European international championship in London in 2016. Though your decks varied greatly, you both played basic energy from the same Pokemon set released earlier that year. What set was it? Evolutions? Generation. Pram got it right. Oh yeah. I just remember the energy. The old ones. Yeah. Yeah. The lines. Those are nice. The reason why I actually know this is because I still use these. These are my favorite type of energy. Yeah. They're good. I still use them too. Yeah. Yeah. So I know John and I had talked about having the two of you on and we went back and actually combed through your top eight game from the stream video from that year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember we were talking about that. Yeah. We were talking about that. So this is the top eight game stream video from that year, and I have to imagine that's where John pulled this detail from. If you already knew this off the top of your head, then hats off to you. No. There's no way. Well, thank you both for participating, Pram. We don't have a prize to give to you, unfortunately. The prize is all of us just whiffing the answers, so it's all good. Pram, the next time I see you, I'll give you a Generations basic energy. There you go. There you go. How have you guys felt the game has changed over the years since you've kind of started with things? I mean, the player base explode from the time that, you know, when I first started playing, we were playing at card shops with maybe 12 people showed up for your city championship, which is relatively similar to kind of some league challenge turnouts nowadays, but you would also see state or even regional level events that only had 120, 150 people at them. And now we're hitting events that are capping out at over 2000 players, and in some cases could even push far beyond that if there were space to include all of them. So what other changes have the two of you seen as the game has kind of grown over the years? Graf, I'll start with you. Sure. So I think the biggest change overall is probably like the availability of lists. And that's kind of been ramping up as time has gone on. So, you know, early on, like deck building was like such a talent, because if you had somebody who's actually good at building decks, like you were at just such an advantage and not too much was shared online and you could keep secrets and things like that. And then the Internet started and people started posting their lists and things became a little bit more available. But nowadays, with like limitless just posting like every single list that pops up and just being able to like click a button and buy the entire deck of a TCG player is probably like the biggest change, I would say. OK. Yeah, I think the biggest change, though, is like just the scale of everything, because like, you know, when the events were like smaller, you could just kind of walk around and run into everyone. But like when the events got really, really big, you actually have to like it's it's like just so many people like you can't really find anyone specific unless you're really looking out. And then I think the other biggest thing with the scale is like the how much of an endurance it is to like even just participate in the tournament. Like you have to go, you know, now it's like eight rounds, eight to nine rounds. But like, you know, you go through those nine rounds and by the end of it, you're people are just playing like way differently than they did at the beginning because of like how big of an endurance it is. I think that's like a big one. Yeah, it was something that I definitely noticed. Like, as I said, I'd taken that step back and came back and played my first couple of major events last year. I know NAIC in particular started out the day bright and ready, you know, you know, back in the day we used to have lunch breaks at our events. And I know here and there, some regionals have featured them, but going through NAIC, going through nine rounds and getting to the time where I'm going to go meet up with people for dinner and feeling like I can't even walk to whatever restaurant that I'm going to go to is just so physically and mentally taxing to kind of run through that gauntlet. You know, hats off to everyone who was able to go through multiple 15 round events over the course of a year. For sure. Yeah, that's one thing I think about. I'm friends with Eric Nance, who's a longtime player in North Carolina. And that's one thing he always says is just like, it's such a grind now. And I want to ask you guys, as players that have been playing for as long as you have, do you feel like you're physically still able to compete or is it just been a lot harder? I think now that you guys are pushing into your 30s, is it harder to compete at this level? I think you just have to, like, know what you're getting into, because it's like you need to know, like, you're just you're going to be in it all day. And so it's just kind of like planning around that. But like, I don't you know, I think I always handle it fine. It was just like one of those things where it's like, oh, this is a long day. Yeah, I would agree. I think you kind of just have to lock in the one of the things that I think is a big thing is deck choice. I think you kind of need to, like, know, like, OK, you might be able to play like this deck at a six round tournament and locals or whatnot. But if you're going to be playing like nine rounds of Lost Box or something like you really have to be like engaged in those games. So the fatigue is definitely real, though. It's a little bit harder, but I don't know if it's age or just it's such a so much thinking the game is just a bit more like you're more into it now, I guess. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think one of the changes that has come up is, you know, we've had a lot of structural changes within these events. We used to play best of one. Now we play best of three. You used to I mean, obviously the scale of things impacts things very greatly. We used to only have, you know, nine rounds best of one day one. And that's much easier to breeze through, especially when you did have a round that ended very quickly going either direction, because then you do get that 20 minute break to run and get food or whatever. Whereas now a lot of times you'll try to drag out that game three to see if maybe you can scrape out a win and all of a sudden you've been fully engaged for up to 50 minutes in a what could be a fairly stressful mental situation and then immediately have to turn around and go play another game. And it just is like Grafton said, you always have to be on in a lot of these scenarios, especially depending on what type of deck that you're looking at playing. So I know we also wanted to ask, like you mentioned, deck choice, Grafton, and how that can impact your performance over the course of an event. If someone was a new player going to a regional or an international championship, as we're going to discuss here shortly, what sort of advice would you give them heading into that event if they've never been to one before? Well, if we're talking about like deck choices, I think the big one, and I'll probably, we'll probably talk about it more as we get into like more specific decks is you either need to pick a deck that you're like, you're really confident in, in like the way that you know the matchups. You can call it like a one-trick deck. Or whatever you want to call it, but you need to like, say you want to play Charizard at the event. Like, I don't know if Charizard's the best deck, but if Charizard's the best deck for you, you know how to play it. You're comfortable with it. I think that does a lot to fatigue. Same with like decks that are kind of like low thought, like Iron Thorns. I played that. That was the easiest day of Pokemon I've ever, I've ever played. You know, you take like four actions a turn. It, that's the most, most of the time you're doing one or two things and then declaring your attack and moving an energy. And so I think that's the best way to play it. And so, I think like, if we're talking deck choice, like you really have to think about those kinds of things. I don't think like, you never want to be walking into an IC with like a deck that you haven't played like every matchup against, at least like the major. Like you kind of need to know like what things are going to be going on in the matchups Especially if you're picking like a deck that maybe doesn't have the best matchup spread, but you're just like comfortable with it Sure. Sure So you would say in addition to Kind of picking a deck that you're comfortable with that Practice is also obviously very important and that you want to try to get as many reps with the deck as possible Yeah, you just need to you know Practicing for me is always like a weird thing it's almost more important for you to just kind of learn like the the prize routes and things like that and matchups like when You sit down and like I said, you're playing Charizard and you flip over against like the turtle deck You you need to know like okay This is how this game is going to go for the most part You should have that kind of down like the major core four or five decks And then you should expand that and practice against the other decks, but you know, you don't need to get as Specific with it, but you really needed whatever deck you're picking You need to know the matchups of like the main core four or five matchups that you're gonna run into Okay Okay, make sense Sure, frame. Did you have anything to add as other kind of points for advice that you may want to give to a new player? Um, yeah, I mean like I just want to like echo like all that. It's like I always want to play a deck. That's You're more comfortable with and just like kind of picking up the new Good deck of the week kind of thing and yeah, and then another thing is just you know just uh kind of keep in mind like how long the tournament's gonna be so it's just like Really prep for like when you're gonna like taking like some breaks And it's tough especially with the ICS because you're traveling and things like that Like sure you need to just have the mindset that there are 3,000 people at this tournament or 2,000 people or whatever and it It's just a tough competition I mean like all of us if i'm sure had oh three days and things like that Like it just happens. You just have to keep the right mindset Yeah, yeah, i'm sure that's really discouraging for a newer player That you know, they might feel confident even with their deck And they might have even done well locally But to like go to one of these giant internationals or even regionals nowadays And just have a lackluster performance, especially I feel like if you're like a new player Lackluster performance, especially I feel like if you're traveling for an international championship, um, you just put so much pressure on yourself to do well Um, because you spend so much money, you know, it takes extra time off of work or whatever I'm sure it's just really discouraging. So it's good to hear that that It's okay to have an o3 day um You know and just go out and enjoy the I guess other amenities that a city might offer or I mean There's lots of other fun stuff to do at these ics Um, I know for other regionals i've been to There's always good side events going on and they're not always run by pokemon themselves or the organizers rather Um, there's some really good like retro format stuff. Um, You know, and there's always people wanting to cube that kind of stuff So just take advantage of making new friends and learning having different experiences that you wouldn't normally have um at your local level for playing pokemon as my I guess two cents to add to all that Absolutely Yeah it's a great point like the best thing that a new player can do is really dive into the community and find like You know people to play the game with in whichever way shape or form I think we've all had to do that at one point or another when we were starting out you know going to our first regional I know it feels like forever ago now, but Uh, we always had like we had to make our own friends of locals and kind of figure it out on our own um, and I think now especially is a really good time for somebody new coming into the game to be able to have more resources, but also like Have more connections than ever before I mean, it's really easy to just get plugged into somebody's discord channel and just start contributing kind of bouncing ideas off other people um having that sense of community is Both easier and harder than I think it has been in the past like in the past you kind of adhered to whoever was around you Um, because there wasn't any other options, but now I think you have a little more choice um, which makes it a little harder I feel like to have Kind of that break-in moment. Um, but I think once you do get in it's a lot easier to keep up that communication like long distance wise, um Through all these different channels we have nowadays For sure, and that kind of expands, you know to life in general like it's it's easy to It's easier to connect to people than it used to be all simultaneously Like you said like social situation can still be difficult for some people the pokemon community on average That was very welcoming and I would encourage anyone who wants to get into the game to definitely take that step find your local League Find someone that you can connect with to enjoy the game with whether that's a family member a friend Or you could meet someone new at a local card shop that you could start up a friendship with maybe travel to a regional together You know, I know i'm sure all of us have done those Cross state line trips to multiple events I know we used to do it to Events that really didn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things just because we all enjoyed playing the game I know grass and I both frequently would make trips up to georgia for week-long stretches of city championship tournaments And that was mostly just for the fun of the game you know, there were some kind of elo points on the line for various formats in various years, but At the end of the day everyone just wants to play pokemon and I think that we could all agree that the community Generally welcomes most people with open arms as long as they come in with the right mindset and right attitude With that being said I think that we can dive into the meat of this episode and something where I think john and I would both appreciate the insight For some rather storied and accomplished players as yourselves And we're going to look at kind of a data-driven approach to this seller crowd format Which I think we all kind of agreed prior to starting the cast We're a little surprised to still be in the seller crown format at this point, you know Typically historically all of these ics have kicked off the start of a new format with the release of a new set Of a new format with the release of a new set, you know We're coming on the heels of the searching sprites pre-releases and I think a lot of people would be really interested to see All of that format really kick off here But instead we're gonna have to wait until sacramento rolls around to see if that bears any fruit um, did either of you have any thoughts on just This kind of transition and not having access to these new cards for this major event Um, I mean you just have to like practice and like for like both formats really because it's like You just want to you want to just keep playing the current format and then you have to prepare for the next one So it's like you just kind of like play both and then And I hope for the best, right? Yeah, sorry, I think my bigger thing was just do you Think that it's odd at all that we don't have the new set available. Like is it just a scheduling snafu? Is it just a scheduling snafu Or do you think that this is more of an intentional decision on the part of the pokemon company? uh, I think it's like just intentional right because like they just want like the new format to be within like every ic celebrates the set With its release kind of thing Okay, that's fair Yeah, that's what I thought it was going to be. That's why I was so surprised I learned like a month ago, you know that it wasn't going to be because I didn't get a trip to brazil I didn't get the invite or anything So i'm not going to laic but you know, I was thinking it was going to be like pikachu the tournament and now it's just more Like probably more turtles, right? So I I thought it was super weird because yeah, like he was saying I thought it was supposed to be like the oh Yeah, this is the new set It's the big you know One of the major tournament or more major tournaments like no one knows what the good decks are the meta, you know, blah blah and instead what we're going to see looks like kind of the culmination of the format and that looks like it'll continue to be The trend as we go to future ics throughout the year as well With euic being kind of the tail end of surging sparks, even though I think we will also have Access to the terrestrial festival or whatever. The ev set is going to be called in english Potentially i'm actually not sure the release date of that and how that coincides with everything and then the same thing Presumably would be the case for naic when it rolls around that we would have whatever set is being released a week Or two after euic as well. So rather than having these Big major major events Kick off new formats now. They're kind of the crescendo for them instead Probably just a little bit of a switch zones I think I like the old way better though I think it's more fun from a viewer perspective like you want to see to me One of the major challenges in a new format is coming up with a good solid deck list uh going into a new meta Um, and I think we've seen that the last few years where you know The meta coming to naic and then after naic are completely different like reggie drago is a good example where? Coming into naic nobody played that. I mean like not nobody but it was a rogue deck and then coming out it became the best deck in format essentially Um, and so it is just yeah, it is baffling. Um, I don't Want to speculate too much without having more information at hand as to why pokemon made that decision or if you know, maybe It was something that wasn't in their control. I don't know but um, it definitely feels kind of I mean it I guess you could view it as a crescendo It is kind of I mean I watched good dance last week. Um, and there was a lot of high play a lot of good. Um, Kind of good interactions and we're seeing like the cream rising to the top overall i'd say but it definitely can feel a little tired for Like the casual viewer it's like less reason to tune in maybe Um to watch the same format we've been watching for the last three months So, I mean that that from the viewer perspective, it's definitely less exciting i'd say Yeah, I thought it was like a big talking point too like, you know, like oh This is the first tournament that this set is legal like, you know, here here are the new cards Let's watch the new cards and I thought it was that kind of thing. But I guess the regionals still do the same Right. Yeah, it's just kind of a reframing of things at the end of the day That's a good way to look at it. Yeah Okay, so we're going to pull up like I said We're trying to do this from a data-driven perspective And like john mentioned last week was the good dance regional over in poland The data set we're looking at includes all of the major events excluding that event Which does have a few implications. We saw a lot of control decks in the top cut of that event We kind of um in a lot of ways circled back almost to the world's meta And that rigidrago was very popular Obviously you do have the inclusion of tarapagos But a lot of the other decks that had kind of popped up along the way seemed to fall back by the wayside but prior to that We have these data being compiled and provided by pokehyde tcg on twitter All of these results from these games are day two matches at major events So hopefully you kind of get to see the you know More skilled players playing against each other in these matchups The matchup data should be a little bit more accurate as a result of that And we're going to go through these x kind of one by one. I believe that they're being represented by play rate So rather than placement order and we're just going to go through each deck individually and kind of discuss them as we arrive at them So the first one we have here is raging bolt ogre pawn which Has had a whopping 13.1 percent representation in day two across multiple events Which is a little baffling from my perspective when it's had two events where it has basically fallen off the face of the earth But you know when you do have success and kind of spike them at a few different events Maybe that more so can make up for it Despite the fact that this deck does have multiple strong matchups We do see that it has a sub 50 percent win rate over the course of day two across all of these events And you can see that the matchup spread You know, it boasts went high win rates against decks like dragapult iron thorns and reggie drago in particular Is something that would want to be called out while having difficult times into charizard tarabagos and then more stall decks like snorlax So I know reggie drago is a deck that a lot of top players tend to shy away from So how do you grafton and michael feel about this deck heading into laic? Michael, let's start with you Uh, I mean, I think this deck is still like really good like it's one of those decks where it's uh Because it's kind of easy to play. You can kind of like, uh speed through your rounds like you'll almost never get a tie um, you just like And like you just play kind of fresh the entire day uh, so it's like one of those decks where it's like I think if Players are kind of like not sure on what to do. Like this deck is like great plus it's like you're just playing matchup roulette And so it's like as long as you have the right matchups you just win and if you don't then like Maybe they maybe just get them sometimes like Yeah, I mean the stack is like really good. Uh It just has a good meta matchup spread which is why it's like you've seen like some success from it But uh, it is very linear. So it is easy to play around it Sure, sure Crafton, how do you feel about raging gold? Uh, yeah, like he said there at the end it's like it easily has the counters if you run into those counters It's just a sad day. That's kind of just the tournaments nowadays is you're the tournament organizer guy Tom, you know in the back booth is making all the choices for you at the end of the day So if you hit the right matchups, it's cool the deck's explosive and quick and as long as you hit the sawdust when you need to hit them the deck is consistent and uh Yeah, I don't I don't have any issues with the deck it you know, it has that the 43 win rate it's pretty bad But it's just one of those decks that you're really signing up for the roulette wheel when you're playing it sure, and so Do you think that as reggie drago has continued? Continued to become more and more popular as the format has worn on Do you think that raging bolt looks to be a better play heading into laic than this win rate may reflect? Well, I would think the opposite just looking at the numbers here, oh wait, no it has a positive winner against ready to go yeah, probably then I mean like you're getting up there and just running them over before they can evolve and You would hope so, but I actually don't know if reggie Drago is going to be as popular heading into laic which sounds crazy because it just won But I just see it's like that that's the whole cycle, right? Like it ended up winning So now it's like everybody wants to play the counter decks And so we're probably going to see like a shift into you know More of the decks that have like the better matchups against it So this deck should be a bit more popular, but I think it's going to work against them Work against the reggie drago players or work against the raging bolt players the raging bolt But I also think like the best like lugia is probably like, you know Really popular deck and so this having a good lugia matchup and a good thorns matchup It might find like just the right niche to kind of rise to the top again, but I don't know. It's just Again, it's just that luck deck. You just really have to sign up for the the roulette wheel and hope for the best Okay, one thought I have is like how is this deck stayed on top for basically after worlds it's just become the number one deck and i think the argument would be like it's probably the easiest um relatively to other decks easiest deck to do well with at a tournament comparative to uh like lugia and reggie drago and lost uh box and charizard and all that um but like that should work for some degree i don't feel like it's earned its top spot comparative to other decks we've seen in the past we have the one spike finish with caleb but then you look at the top distribution there you have three top eights and that's it outside of that first place like we're gonna look at some other decks in a minute that have eight nine you know top eight placements like lugia and reggie drago that are able to keep coming back like to have four across how many tournaments is this aaron it's like five or six i believe so it should be louisville um oh my gosh i'm totally blanking dormant uh the lima special event will lil and then i cannot remember the other south american region so i want to say five um join join yes yeah it's like they say join vla i think is what i don't know i don't speak portuguese but yeah so that's five right if we can't correct so four out of five times 40 so it's 10 and it's not nothing um but it definitely feels comparative to the representation we see there are 13 like it's just not converting in day two it's not winning most of its matches in day two why do you guys think it is i mean i kind of touched on what i thought but i want to hear your perspectives um start with pram this time yeah i think it's just because it's like it's uh like the deck's just too linear so like you know by the time you reach day two most x will have like some sort of game plan like against uh raging bolt and then they just pull it off like uh you know raging bolt not great and uh blood moon stuff like that yeah but more interested in like what what's kept it on the top of the deck choice for most players going into me i mean it's just uh easy to play and match you just match up roulette all right like um it's not because like there's something to be said about like you know a deck that you can play like at 100 efficiency versus like you know playing a deck at like you're okay at but like uh you know you're playing at like 80 and like even though the deck is like simple it's just like if you can do it 100 right then the deck's super powerful that's true yeah yeah sure i think uh like when i was talking about earlier knowing the matchups i think this is a deck that if you don't have like a lot of time to practice or put into the game like this is a deck that you don't need a ton of practice with because like brown is saying it's linear it's like your game plan every single matchup is basically exactly the same you're just attaching energies and blowing people up with the raikou giraffe so that's pretty much it um you don't have to like know like oh in this matchup like i'm supposed to use this guy and attack here and you know besides like maybe every once in a while you have to use the ogre pawns attack you're pretty much just saying raikou raikou raikou raikou and uh but the you know the last tournament we saw people were putting slitherwing into the deck as like an extra attacker a single prize guy and i think i think that actually adds a lot to the deck i really like that card even seeing two of them in some lists for sure for sure like you said there are one matchup in particular i know uh palkia dustmar is one that has a little bit more nuance to it but aside from that a lot of times you can just kind of set up and roll face with the deck which like you said with iron thorns at naic last year graft and it makes your day a lot easier mentally let's go ahead and move on to our second deck and this is a deck that has kind of come onto the scene as a result of this new format that is terrapagos dust noir with the 11.6 percent representation we've seen a lot of top players pick this up for this format i know towards been playing it at pretty much every event he's gone to gave smarts been playing it um kayla brodger rogerson got yeah he had a good finish and grant manly some of the north carolina people yeah and the deck boasts a very powerful attack obviously with the united beatdown has access to that powerful knock towel ability and do you think that the reason that players would gravitate to something that is still kind of a i'm going to beat you down with a basic similarly to raging bolt but do you think that the reason that the top players would gravitate toward this is more so because of the versatility and potential skill expression that you get access to with some of the other tools that the deck has um like yeah i mean uh people like top players like to have like a lot of options and this is the deck is like really gives you a lot of options because you know you have a knock to basically just do whatever you wanted to do on that turn and so that kind of attracts like top player play uh just because it just you just feel like it's more in control uh on what's going on and like the deck is just super solid so yeah i think uh for people who like high action decks this is it yeah i um i've found the deck very hard to play so i can see like you know it's uh the better players are probably spending time with it and really getting the reps in with the deck and they're finding a lot of success with it i've been tracking it online a good bit and you know the win rates when it first came out were just terrible but it was just because people had to learn the deck learn the list you know bouffalant was in it before it came out it came out bouffalant was gone and then now bouffalant's back and so you know it's just a lot of like working around it's just a lot of like working around like shifting it to the meta a little bit because you just play so many like odd techs well techs like one of's and supporters for this and that and you know you get to abuse briar which is a lot of fun but the deck just wins a lot of games that you're not expecting it to if you know how to play the deck right and so it's like it's a hard deck to play but it has like it's you guys are saying a lot of skill expression and it's just it's kind of fun too you know absolutely yeah you definitely get to use the most gimmicks out of any deck i'd say at this point you get to use the briar you get to use the thordon you get to use pidgeot to search anything out the you get like basically yeah dust nor even you get to do more than basically i think other than reggie drago might well it's it's pretty pretty straightforward too so yeah i think this is a deck like if you're trying to have the most agency when you're playing a game of pokemon when you sit down you're like i can i mean it's win rate is pretty close to 50 so that gives you the idea like and i mean the matchup spread is pretty polarized i'd say um it's not quite like uh like we've seen in the past with like a lost zone garatina deck where it's got like that even matchup spread it's still pretty polarized but within that even i'd say this gives you more agency than um like we just talked about with raging bolt um you definitely have more options than we've seen right and the the scary thing to me looking at this seeing that we have seen reggie drago win the last two major events and that we consider that it is probably going to be a rather popular choice among more skilled players or more highly skilled players heading into this event seeing it be a rather abysmal matchup kind of scares me or would scare me off of wanting to play the deck even though you do have games where you know a lot of times terabagos does seem to depend more on the coin flip than a lot of other decks do you know if you're not going first you can really fall behind against some of these decks um you do boast a rather sizably good matchup into raging bolt which is kind of like it but is that enough to counterbalance having bad matchups against decks that you would expect more highly skilled players to bring i mean i personally feel that lost in box reggie drago palkia dustor and charizard have really been kind of the favorites of a lot of the upper echelon of players throughout this format and it's something that if i was carrying those bad matchups i may want to think twice about bringing this deck to the event but am i off base in thinking that um i think my one counter to you um and you guys step in if you have anything else after this but um this past weekend at gdansk we saw most of the travagos players adding bouffalant into their lists as a major counter to reggie drago reggie drago caps out at 280 bouffalant with its ability reduces damage by 60 so you have effective 290 hit points so it's very very difficult for the reggie drago player to reach that um 290 number uh to knock this out and it makes it even i think more more important than even that giratina play is the kirram play uh trifrost from kirram you could just decimate an early travagos board with reggie drago before bouffalant was in the deck you could go you know trifrost knock out two hoot hoot and a duskull or two hoot hoot and a pidgey turn two and they travagos never really recovers from that but if you get bouffalant out early enough and are able to prevent them from using trifrost to knock out three um support pokemon on your bench then um you're able to really swing that match up i'd say yeah i was gonna say i think this one is probably gonna be the most misleading deck of like the data because it's missing gdansk right it's only till 10 28 so and because we saw like again people more people picked up the turtle more people learned the turtle and it had a good showing really good showing at gdansk in my mind so i would wonder how all the numbers would change if they were factoring that one in okay so the the big takeaway from that since you said that the numbers may need to shift a little bit to compensate for this most recent event if a lot of these numbers probably are not including bouffalant in the deck so you would say if you were going to pick up travagos heading into laic the biggest advice that we could give people is to make sure that you do include those buffalos in your list if you expect to play against reggie drago throughout the event which is probably a pretty high likelihood yeah i'd look i'd start with towards list from the event i mean that's always a good starting point right but um yeah i just go from there kind of tweak it to how you like it um he has a lot of text a lot of one of so obviously if you want a more consistent deck for that kind of long tournament um we see at laic um that's never a bad move but yeah make it your own but then yeah i'd probably just start with towards kind of list from gdansk okay pram you have anything to add before we move on or you're good no i mean just uh yeah just copy a good deck uh the deck list and then there's practice just practice until you know you know and uh once you like once you don't have to like really think about it then you're like okay i can like uh you can like start worrying about like your matchups and stuff right reggie drago has just always just been typically the 50-50 deck like um it just takes overall decent matchups so it doesn't take any horrible matchups it can just win um in like weird spots so yeah i mean it's just always just been the 50-50 deck so it's like i can see why a lot of players like to play it yeah i mean you'd say it's probably akin to the lost tina of this format yes pretty similar it's a good comparison i'd say yeah uh next up on our matchup train we have charles arpeggio which is you know in my mind kind of fallen by the wayside in this format but we do still see a rather sizable representation a positive win rate over the course of all these events um and i think that that gets carried by a few of these key matchups you know the raging bolt and terapagos matchups in particular seem to be rather favorable for this deck while on the opposite end of the spectrum you tend to have rather negative matchups into reggie drago and then a few of these other kind of counter meta decks like iron thorns or like snorlax so do you see any way for charles or to kind of evolve with this meta i know we've seen some discussion from people in the community like azul who feel that all of the inclusions of cards like dust war are kind of a bit too much for the deck even though the most successful run that we've seen with the deck included dust war in the list so i'm trying to figure out if charles our players wanted to be successful going into this weekend is it better to stick with consistency or do they want to try to tech their list out to cover as many bases as possible i mean i would generally say you want to go with uh just go with consistency just play the game um yeah just go i would always err on going like uh run as many consistency cards as you can uh try to do your strategy every time uh as if you're going too fancy then sometimes your strategy just doesn't work yeah i i would mostly agree i mean i'm i'm always one for some fun techs but for charizard charizard is always kind of like this as long as you're doing the charizard thing you should be working out and unless you get your board blown up before you can set up like as long as you set up a couple charizards and they just get to be giant beat sticks you should be winning the game but i just i i don't like charizard going into the tournament either again i think i said earlier it's like unless you're like a super comfortable with the deck it's like your pet deck your one trick charizard player like i don't know if this is like the the the deck to be picking up for the tournament i don't think this is like the oh i think this is a really good meta call i think it's just another deck that you know can find success but it just even in gdansk i think it like it just wasn't around i don't even think one made top 16 right probably right outside of it but it just it didn't really show up and i i think it's just because the meta has evolved like you know like we were saying that control did pretty well at gdansk i don't know like how the control match i would figure most control decks you know yeah and we see that on this infographic with snorlax stall having a uh charizard into snorlax stall only wins 26.3 percent of the time so that's probably one of its worst matchups yeah so like that with like binette and thorns as well thorns being at the bottom of the list i mean if you just yeah it it turns into like matchup roulette for like a deck that you really wouldn't want because you're just a beat stick deck you don't you know it doesn't feel as good when you just run into like two off meta decks that are playing like three Mimikyus and you just have to pick up your cards. Sure. Going into this event we would be kind of hard-pressed to advise people to pick up Charizard at this point. Yeah that would be my opinion on it. Yeah like unless you're like a big Charizard fan it's like there are other decks to play but like Charizard you know if you're gonna play Charizard then it's like it's not horrible it's just fine. Yeah that's fair. I used to say like I would never dissuade someone from playing Charizard like Charizard was always like oh it's a top three deck like you can just play Charizard anytime this is a now we're starting to sway a little bit more in the direction like reconsider Charizard. Sure sure you know a deck that you had mentioned as being a potentially good play draft and next up we do have Lugia here which has seen some really interesting trends I would say over the course of these past two formats both you know the first regional that we had of the year in Baltimore with Raul and Kieran both making top eight with the deck and then no changes to the list really over the course of most of these events you know it's just some kind of minor count changes within the list and the deck has seen off and on some pretty major success but I think that it may boast the most top eight appearances of any other deck that we're going to talk about today. I know most recently in Gdansk the deck performed absolutely abysmally but I do think that the meta at that event in particular was really kind of against it I know that it had the highest percentage of thorns that we've seen post worlds and I'm not sure if that trend would continue to be the case but obviously if you look at this this has to be the worst matchup that we're gonna look at if you see the thorns indication on this graphic with a sub 10% win rate into the deck I mean admittedly a small sample size but I don't expect that the matchup would improve if we included more games do you think that Lugia has kind of seen all of the success that it's going to see in this format and should continue to expect to perform slightly well for some players depending on what matchups they hit but on the whole not really be the call as we move forward what do you think Michael Lugia is just like the chosen deck like you gotta just like to me it's like if you are just like decently good at the game and you want to have some flexibility just play Lugia like literally it's so good it's it's so good it has the most top eights that's fair it's just you should more is I think it's always underrepresented whenever I see the metadata I'm like wow more people should just be playing Lugia yeah I would agree with him I think it's underrepresented I think like I know people are scared of the coin flip and things like that that's like one of my big hesitations on it and you know I didn't like the deck for a long time but I think it's just a crazy good deck I mean the energies give you such wide variety of like random effects that you just shouldn't have like just having missed energy for free and just having gift energy for free like being able to abuse these energies that are so good that other decks that don't get the option to but um I think this is the tournament where you it's flutter mains going into the deck I think you do kind of have to respect the thorns whether it's a tech or not I think it's time for flutter main to go back in flutter main doesn't even solve the matchup every single time but like I just think it's time for flutter main to go back in so now do you say that because this is an international championship or do you think that that's kind of the position that Lugia is in regardless of what the next major event is I think that regardless like the like in this format I think thorns needs to be respected I think thorns is just a really strong solid matchup I think there's just enough other things like you know there might be some lost box shenanigans that you can push it up against there's you know you might run into like you don't really need it for Snorlax stall right you just do the jet energies and blow them up over and over again but you know there's just there's just certain things I think like the flutter main is touching on that's good and I just see like the thorns being a standalone deck and then also being teched into like these dragapult decks with Crispin and like weird things like that just to have like I think we're gonna see a bit more ingenuity with all that you know that's like the fun part of the ICs is that when the new set was coming out you got the ingenuity of people building new decks but now like the format has evolved so far and has like shifted and you know the control and things like that more people are picking that kind of stuff up and I just see it as like Lugia is in a great position to just kind of eat those decks as long as you don't just run into a couple thorns and your day is over so I think it's a I think flutter I think it's time I hate flutter I hate I hate the card I mean I don't think it's good I just like this is the first time like I would say like it's flutter main time John did you have any thoughts on Lugia before you move on from it I'm just curious cuz I hear you guys saying it's like I mean I agree like Lugia is that broken deck when you set up but it's the setting up that becomes the Achilles heel of this deck so often and we look at Gdansk and there wasn't really any Lugia in top eight I don't know how much representation there was in day two I I mean I guess I don't have the same enthusiasm for Lugia I I'm not saying it's like you know like if you've been running Lugia this format probably don't change but like I don't think we're always gonna change his list or well he might change one or two cards in the list but I don't think he's gonna change decks at this point but I don't know maybe I just don't have the same enthusiasm just because I the one regional I ever played Lugia like maybe I just got burned by it you know and I think that's where I'm at with it and I and I think Grafton you brought up that whole like you would never dissuade somebody from playing Zard yeah I think if somebody is like I'm complaining Lugia it's like yeah that's also awesome honestly one of the best picks you can make like top five I top top decks for this tournament for sure so it was 10% of day two at Gdansk but none of them did good I think the top scoring was like 40th right yeah I believe I saw a tweet that the highest placing Lugia placed worse than the highest placing Qian Pao at this event that's a reference for where it's at in the format it may not be in the best place at this exact moment but it is a little bit more flexible than some people give it credit for so it may be able to kind of recover and push through it next up we have everyone's favorite deck Snorlax stall and you know this deck has gone through a wide variety of changes throughout its lifespan we've seen people take more aggressive routes like Azul's regional win last year where he played Chi-Yu and a few energy to be able to aggressively mill his opponents deck and now we're seeing things like Sanders list that doesn't even play Rotom and plays boxed order and trekking shoes in the deck and tries to force your opponent to go through six one prisers to win the game and I think that Snorlax is a deck that you know there are a lot of decks that have very highly polarized matchups but this is one that really sticks out to me as needing to hit the right matchups to succeed throughout the day and with that being said do you think Michael that the deck like what direction do you think this deck would need to go in to be the most successful heading into this format as it stands today um I mean just having uh just just practicing with the deck honestly like the second is just another one of those experts you're just taking like matchup swings and you're just kind of like deckless checking people but it's more about like if how they build their deck rather than in your deck but like as long as you can know the matchups and I can play them well then yeah like it just puts the pressure on them so are you a fan would you say of the Rotom or Rotom less variance um I'd probably go Rotom okay yeah I think I think I agree with the base question that probably the Rotom version is just it's a bit probably easier to play I haven't tried Sanders list but I would imagine that it's a little bit more stressful I don't I don't know but that would be my guess it's it's it's always been the online terror right whenever you're playing online it's you're just gonna run into more snorlax and like anything else and it's just a really fun time over and over and over again but I it's in a weird spot you know it's like it's like you know the top distribution and stuff it just doesn't really crack the top four it has like that okay you know the weirder matchups when it comes to like the time and things like that and it's just it it's just a weird deck I I don't really know like when I played it before counter catcher came out with like Scranton the play to and switch them around I can't remember the card name right now so it's like you know when I was really playing the deck like it was very different but it's just I like what pram says like it's more based on the opponent's deck the whole match of the whole first game you're just playing like okay let me see your discard pile okay you're playing this so you're playing that and it's you know it's a lot of like that so it's like between practicing and knowing like okay I have to play this card here oh they're setting up for this play you have to anticipate their moves a lot more and you know it's just it's that niche deck like if you're a snorlax player you're playing snorlax if you don't play control decks and snorlax I just don't go near the deck if you if you like making friends with your opponent don't play the deck that's funny I know I sat next to one of the Ginsberg brothers in Baltimore over the course of I think three rounds in day one and he apologized to every single person and you see the light like drain from their eyes they're like oh oh no and then you just have to leave them like yeah and then if they don't know the deck you have to like explain it like yeah you can't retreat and they're like oh you're just trying to make me lose the game you're not even trying to win it's like yeah well that's the same thing at the end of the day speaking of yes speaking of that reach across the table and punch you graph and you have a lot of experience with this deck and I know you may not have played it as much recently and a lot of the matchups are quite different than they used to be just because we do have a lot of decks that weren't in the format at the time of NAIC you know Tarapagos and Reggie Drago in particular and I'm sure that you may have tested this or help test against this deck for people with worlds in mind so you may have some experience in some of the matchups like Reggie Drago but Iron Thorns is something where it won worlds and then it just disappeared for five events and then suddenly popped up again last week in a good dance and did rather well I believe two of them made top eight and we're looking at something where you know if you want to talk about polarized matchups this and Snorlax both probably have some of the most polarized matchup spreads that you'll see if you look at matchup tables and do you think that there's enough of a reason to pick this over a different deck at the end of the day aside from maybe the point that you brought up earlier in the cast with the lower mental stress that you would incur throughout the day yeah I mean I really like this deck for a lot of reasons I think it's just like a fun goofy deck you know you just get to stop your opponent from playing and things like that yeah obviously with Dusknoir coming out Dusknoir has hurt this card a lot in my mind and you can kind of see that reflected in some of the matchups and stuff that just more decks having like those kind of abilities and stuff is bad for this deck but uh but no I don't have too much like weird advice with it after Nationals like nobody wanted to play test against this deck most people were just like telling me like oh yeah the world's like yeah if I run into thorns like you know I run into thorns and I think a lot of people take that mindset with it and for the why it dropped off face the earth I couldn't tell you I think the decks been solid for a while obviously the Raging Bull Ogre Pawn matchup but you can see it here is that does not feel like a good matchup when you're playing it either so I think that's probably like where a lot of the hesitation of playing the deck has gone again I would be interested with Gdansk to see how like some of these numbers have changed just getting more numbers on the board but but yeah it's it's really simple that's that's that is the biggest like key point of the deck is that you're gonna flip over and if your opponent flips over Lugia it's like cool I'm gonna have a 40 minute break this round and then you can just go do whatever you want and if they flip over Snorlax still you're like cool I'm gonna have a 40 minute round like in break again this round so you know like you're saying it's that that matchup that's very volatile but it's like you just don't have to think the entire day right how do you feel about this deck yeah I mean this deck is just like another one of those you get your dude out and you just if your opponent has an answer and if they don't you just win and so there's a lot of those decks running around this format and this is just another one of the I getcha kind of decks and if that's like your thing then like and you think there's gonna be a lot of Lugia then yeah Iron Thorns is great. I know Pram you played probably one of the most famous getcha decks with Pyroar at Nationals 2017 I think yeah yeah so in your perspective like when you played that did it just feel like it was unfair for your opponent the whole time or was it just like because at that point I don't think we were ready for it I think people might be ready for Iron Thorns but like is there still that edge you're getting when you go to a big tournament like this when you have that like well if you can't do anything I just win like what do you feel like what am I trying to say like so you played that Pyroar deck is this kind of give you that same kind of feeling or is it a little different it's a similar feeling it's a similar type of deck like you're just playing down strong supporters with a wall effect and this one really good one and yeah it's just a good deck it's like but it but it does take its matchups right like like if your opponent can get around your ability then you're not gonna have a good time if they can't then you're gonna have a great time yeah it feels really bad when it happens but yeah I agree with you it's a good balance you know you you want to be that bad math for the guy that he's going there like it's a 5% of the field deck but I ran into two of them you know like you're going to be someone's bad tournament story at the end of the day sure sure But coming up next is a deck that Michael you should be able to shed some light on this having a lot of experience of dragapult I know at one point you hosted a master class on dragapult Although it looks a little bit different than you know, what you may have talked about back then How do you feel that this deck is positioned in this format at this moment? I Mean this deck is great Just the ability to use us nor it won Dormant regional in Europe and Yeah, this this deck is great. I just being able to do like turn to phantom dive with a dust nor is like super crazy You get to do use counter catcher the deck gets smoothed out a lot by the sparkling crystal so That with Arvin like your dad this deck is just cruising now It's just like super consistent super consistent. Like you get the turn to dragapult all the time Mm-hmm, and it's just like one of those experts like if you want if you set up you win Yeah, I have this deck is great if you look at some of the kind of more popular decks in the room being Reggie Drago and being raging bold and Having those listed as kind of bad matchups on this table Do you think even though like you said the deck is great the deck sets up very frequently More consistently than it ever has if those are kind of your worst matchups and they appear more frequently on average Than other decks. Do you think that you would still advise somebody to kind of pick this up heading into this event? Um, I would say it would be like if you if you really like the deck you should just play it but like overall if you think Raging bolt and Drago are like gonna be huge amount of shares. You probably don't want to play this in that case I would probably play I don't know like blue gear or something Okay. Yeah, but if you like if you like this style of gameplay like where you set up you win. This is the deck It's got to him. How do you feel about draggable? Yeah, I kind of agree with what he's saying It's like sub when it's the same kind of thing I was saying about like Charizard except you have just so much more option with like the spreading and things and I Think it's just like the off meta slayer Like if it's not one of the top four decks like this deck just eats it alive It just runs it over and then you get the benefit of having a stage one that has an ability That's really good and pretty much like any you know That that's like how you're judging or I was judging a lot of Pokemon for a while, especially stage twos It's like the stage two either has to be so incredible That's good on its own or you look at like Gardevoir It's so good And then the middle stage is so good and that just like smooths the deck out for you for free So having like just any kind of utility in the stage one just makes decks crazy good Yeah, I think phantom dive is easily the strongest attack in the format right now You just have so much more board control you get around even Manaphy or like the Tara ability, which is huge With that damage placement as opposed to doing bench damage And yeah, I think it is interesting to me that you know We've we've talked about raging bolt being the most popular deck and that appears to be its worst matchup Is there anything that if I wanted to play this deck going into LA? I see what could I do to help with my raging bolt matchup? All right, just take the L Just try your best and take the L I mean like there's not much you can do like because it really just depends on how well raging the raging ball player draw I Mean like obviously I guess the big advice would be not to go to don't knock out a one prizer Unless you're ready to knock out two of them because you got to go to even prices Yeah, I think the other thing that's really hurt that matchup as this format has gone on has been the inclusion of more copies Of bravery charm in those raging bolt lists. So it becomes harder to set up those for prize turns that drag up all just loves to have Yeah, you don't really want to run like tool jammer because you run that crystal you run those You might run that it's a rescue board something like that So you don't really want to shut off your own tools, maybe running a vacuum But that doesn't feel really that good in that deck in this deck rather It's unfortunate. That's the most popular deck, but you just kind of have to take the L Every deck loses or something So sure and we've consistently seen raging but be the most popular deck in the room at every single major event So far in this format and somehow draggable to still manage to come away with a first and second place So, you know at some point you either dodge that matchup or you do still beat it some percentage of the time Sure, maybe that's good enough to you know, win events for you. I Think that in some instances draggable does kind of like you said graph and it kind of feels like the Charizard of this format To me like work if you want the de facto big beefy stage two, that's probably what I would default to Yeah, it just has a lot more versatility in the deck sure Speaking of the deck that can be fairly versatile I know Gratham and I both have been fairly big fans of this Kalkia dust noir deck that originally was popularized by a player in Japan I don't know their actual name, but I believe that their Twitter handle is har a and we both played this to Baltimore Grafton made a symmetrical cut with that and unfortunately lost that game and following that performance the deck has seen some continued success with top fours in both Dortmund and Louisville and You know right now Unfortunately, I'd have to say I don't think the deck is Crazy well positioned, but it's almost in an awkward spot, right? you know Some of the decks that you don't necessarily want to see Kind of on the upswing and the decks that you may want to see Have kind of fallen by the wayside a little bit and it just really this is a deck where You depend a lot of times on going first and a lot of your matchup variants can really play into things with this But you're out there to somebody who has a fair bit of experience with the deck as well How do you feel Palkia stacks up right now? Yeah, I feel like as as it's going more and more because you know we played it and I feel like what there's like Six in the room or something and now we're getting like 150 in the room and the deck is you know Performing here and there but I don't think it did very well at good dance I don't think it had a very good it didn't have a very good time and I think it's time is going on It's having a worse time But it's hard to tell what these kind of decks because these it's just it's a hard deck to play It's another one of those like you have a lot of options You have a lot of ways things can go The cards can just fall in the wrong order and then you have to completely change your game plan It's you know But it's another one of those decks that can we really wiggle Around and find wins and matchups that you're just not expecting that you're going to win and things like that So I still really like the deck. I you know, I would continue to play it today probably if I had to play a deck just because I really like the feel of the deck and The flow of it and whatnot But yeah, I would agree with you I think it for whatever reason it's just not it's showing that it's just not It's just not surviving in the meta as well as it should be with how it went from like a nothing deck to actually a Pretty major deck and now it seems probably to going back to just not being around too much The people are probably switching to the turtle Sure, sure Michael do you agree with that assessment? Yeah I mean like the second the turtle deck plays pretty similarly like it's a pretty similar concept. So like it's more about like Why should you play this build over the turtle back? And then that's where it's like a lot of contention comes from. I think we're seeing a lot of people going like I'll just be turtles I think you touched on it with Raging bull playing more bravery charm. I think that has collateral damage with this deck you They started doing it basically for dust snores and you see it with this like it's your your dust nor math Just as a isn't math and quite like it was before they started running the bravery charms So I think that's kind of what's in my mind is what has been affecting The play rate and then the subsequent Just like like deep runs and day two for regionals the last few weeks Fair enough Fair enough. Yeah, I'm not sure what more we can say about the deck I do still think the deck has the potential to be real explosive and have a really good showing But a lot of it does depend again what matchups you hit and unfortunately for this deck A lot of it also depends on how well pokey stop treats you If you're not having a good day spinning your stop, you're probably not going to have a good event Also, I'd like these numbers. I think the iron thorns matchup is not good. It's good here I think that probably the matchups have happened. There's just not that many like total games or whatever I do not like the iron thorns matchup. So That's so interesting to me because I thought that it was very favorable But I've also been playing to Froakie as of late. So yeah, that might help. Yeah. Yeah So So I would say for anyone wanting to play Palkia dust or heading into LA I see I would definitely include two copies of Froakie and just find both of them on turn one I'm surprised that this kind of rounds out our format I thought that guard of our would be included in this roundup as well And I think that we should touch on it before we close things out but unfortunately, we won't have numbers for it, but surprisingly we're gonna wrap things out with lost on box a deck that Really had totally fallen off the radar because Reggie Drago just absolutely eats it for lunch breakfast lunch and dinner But did pop up at just the right time to have Michael Davidson take second place at Louisville with it Does anyone think that this is actually a good play heading into LA I see Yeah, I think it's actually pretty decent Again, I think there's gonna be a decent surge of Lugia That's my guess and the deck does pretty well in the Lugia and then I also think because of toward doing well with the Tarapagos deck and more people seeing it and you know again It's kind of on that rise and it has a really good match against that deck, too Because a sable I just gets through the Buffaloes so easily and you know If you're popping dust snores against lost box, it's probably not gonna work out for you. They they just they are the one-for-one deck So I actually think it's in a pretty decent spot heading into the event But the problem is is that again, it's another one of those decks. It's like nine rounds of lost box is gonna cook you so unless you are very very comfortable with the deck and you have you you know the mashup super well and you know how to Do your math and you know how to check your prizes and do your resource management and all that like at a decent pace Like I I wouldn't play it just off of those reasons, but I think it actually fits on the meta pretty well Mike how about you? Yeah, um, I just think the the deck is like I don't just match up dependent again it's like you're kind of just worrying about how many Reggie Drago's are in the room and like so like when you see like the like the Louisville Finish it's like well how much Reggie Drago was around? It's like oh, they were all getting pushed out by like raging bolts off like that. And so it's like Yeah, that would explain why it's it's a well and now that like raging bolt, I'm sorry now that Reggie Drago Is more on the rise. I think it's a little bit of a weaker deck choice now John how do you feel about lost zone? I don't like it. I Mean I like the deck Perth like from a Play standpoint like you can make really really cool plays with it lost zone engine is very very cool And I think it might get a little bit more Powerful with the next few sec the next set coming out with all these new terror types that have all these different energy costs that are all over the place, but As long as Reggie Drago is gonna make up like 10% to fit But probably anything over 12% I think it's just a risky play for regionals because I don't feel like you have Quite the matchup spread that you would want to see Sure in my mind For LA I see especially I think it just really comes down to like how many Reggie Drago's. Do you think you're gonna see? Sure The next definitely an interesting spot for sure I know that I Don't I don't have any final thoughts on this deck I think personally that I wouldn't pick it up heading into this event One it's going to be a lot to play over the course of what is going to be a nine round plus four or five rounds Heading into top cut and that's just a lot especially if multiple of those games go to game three Having to make sure that you are on point with knowing exactly what your six prizes are on your first turn before you perform your first flower selecting or sometimes you have to make those unfortunate decisions before you get to look through your deck and It can be really swingy if you just you know make any small mental error And you know, I'm getting a little bit too old for that. So it may just not be my thing at this. It's very punishing Like I said the one last thing that I did want to talk about and then I'll open the floor for you guys if you Have any other decks that you want to shout out? But I was surprised to not see Gardevoir on this list and here I pulled up the list of the highest placing what I'll call Regular Gardevoir because we've also seen Gardevoir popularly paired with Benet as of late But this is a build that looks heavily inspired by Henry Chow That was piloted by Michael Hunter at Gdansk this past weekend and was more on the turbo side of Gardevoir Where we've got the secret box feature. We have the rare candy available and You're looking just to try to ensure that you can get a Gardevoir out Even if you can't go the old reliable slow route of set up four routes and use a TM evo on turn one How do you guys feel Gardevoir is positioned in this meta currently and Do you think that this is the right way to play it or if you want to be a Gardevoir and Kirlia enjoyer? Do you have to head over to Benet town to really see success? Mike let's start with you. I'm just a little uh, I just personally don't like this deck right now just because of uh, I think more Reggie Drago is on the rise and then it's just gonna get dry frosted and then oh There goes your game sure, I Think Garde is um, it's always been up. It's been a problem deck for a while since like the The tournament structure changed in my mind mostly I think you just really can't take ties really when you're going into these events anymore and Gardevoir is just one of those decks where you were just doing so many things every single turn and drawing so many cards and just Making so many actions that you just kind of run out of time I mean, I think it has like a 40% win rate against itself online because they just tie so much like it's just like a funny set and then um, like As much as we hate talking about the clock and stuff it's just like you have to be like aware of the clock and your opponent's going to be thinking about the clock and there's just like a lot of like bad things going on with that that you just don't want to bring into a tournament and then Besides that though, I think the decks pretty good, you know the matchup spread on it I don't think it's like, you know It's it's I think it's another one of those like pretty close to 50-50 decks against like a lot of things and you know It has that consistency But it's another one of those decks like unless you were the most comfortable with Gardevoir over like everything else for some reason at this Point like I just wouldn't pick up the deck Yeah, I think this variant Like I know Henry played the heck out of it before he won with his regionals Like he knew how to play this deck inside and out So if you're not really at that level It's gonna be difficult to pick this up and try to play it in the next week, you know Yeah, I would do the binette version like Aaron saying I think just switch the binette guy do that I think it's a lot more interesting and I think it you know, I would imagine it just it has a like an easier time in the day because a lot of matchups you're just going like you don't get to play the game and that's Just how the format is Yeah I think I think this will probably be the more popular variant going into LA I see and You should probably know how to play against it with your deck at least like run one or two games against it Whatever deck you choose This will probably be the most popular variant of Gardevoir and I think rightfully so at this point It gives you more Agency and it's it's just Maybe not more agency, but you know, it's it's it's cheesier It does what it wants to do a lot more effectively than I think like, you know If you hit Regidrago, you can just like okay cool You're never gonna be able to recover any of your energy ever so you can use that dry frost But then you'll never be able to power up another Regidrago the rest of the game Or if you do it'll just come at the expense of like, you know Not having like I can just bring up something else off your bench and now we can just move around Damage a bunch of times and so it's it's it's really powerful right now Yeah, you get the benefit of like being a binette deck But at the end of the day like you can always just turn into a Gardevoir deck Like you can always just now you're a Gardevoir deck. I'm just gonna go up there I'm just gonna say hit you for a bunch of damage Free energy's gonna scream tail here and there. It's just good Mike how do you feel about this binette variant of Gardevoir? It's only It's just a better version of Gardevoir right now just because of how reliant every all the trainers are So I think if you are gonna play Gardevoir, this is like the way to do it. It's like it's cool deck The quaking punch effect has always been a super good absolutely Absolutely. I think that people You know that that meme that's been going around recently of you know You weren't around when bing bong hit me with his slim slam deck back in my day has really been felt in a lot of ways someone announces Someone I Paraphrased a little bit. I don't know the actual Texas There you go, there we go But I do want to let you guys I want to kind of open the floor for any decks that we didn't talk about that You think we may want to bring up for people heading into LA I see so graph must start with you Did you have anything in mind that we didn't touch on? I know that you briefly mentioned a rather interesting deck. That's kind of a mishmash of two of the decks that we talked about The dragapult thorns. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think it's I think that's just a cute idea I really like just seeing that kind of idea where you're playing like the three energy types and getting the Crispin value in and you Know just is like, okay. I have like these bad matchups because they're super explosive So if I can just slow them down while I set up my deck that if it gets set up wins the game that it's just like a cool kind of like Move into you know, the the early game for the deck that I don't think it had really before Other decks that like might pop up, you know, I'd gold dango continues to just kind of be a deck that's around I don't know why I've never liked the deck but like it it is continued to just be around and then I want to throw a shout out to because There were a few last year in Brazil's the cloth electrode stuff. I want to see some cloths running around But you probably won't see you don't have to worry about that going into the tournament if you run into the one cloth guy It's just like I hope you have a good cloth matchup, but he'll know the matchup and you won't Listen, I mean if iron thorns is on an upswing right now, maybe cloth is a good call. Yeah, maybe Mike how about you? Do you have any interesting decks that you would want to talk about I mean just play a flutter main in Lugia, man Just like get in there put a flutter main in there They see a thorns. Have a good day and That's it that's that's Michael's take for LA I see Like if you if you had to lock in a deck right now Mike would you lock in Lugia with a flutter main Sure That's Love that John, how about you any other decks that you want to talk about? Um No, I think we touched on everything. I I the only thing I I saw coming out of Gdansk Uh, ritchie drago's finding new ways to reinvent itself. We saw the top four lists not Running halucha. We saw The top one that one ran gujra which was cool, uh, the other one that was the top four that lost in the mirror um It ran the haxorus Uh that hits for like it auto deletes anything with special energy On it and then does 230 a discard I think three energy from your deck are three cards from the top of your deck They're in the haxorus and then it ran something else I don't remember But that was notable And we haven't seen noivern, but I think just be mindful of what you could experience Going into that matchup If you're playing reggie drago, I think gujra would be a good inclusion for this weekend, especially Going up against terapagos. Maybe haxorus would be on the table If we see, you know after torrid has a deep run with that and if people start moving away from raging bull to move into terapagos, maybe Consider doing haxorus, um putting haxorus with your reggie drago deck and then yeah, I think It's almost like well, what do you cut at that point to fit all six different dragon pokemon you want to run your deck? Uh, so that's that's just a challenge just trying to figure out your list. It's already such a tight list It's already like pretty much optimized At this point, so I don't know maybe just swap that gujra out for haxorus or vice versa I think at that point from the if you want to just start with the list that Uh got top like first place and good to ask Sure So I know we already kind of got an answer from michael on this question But just around the room before we close things out. I would like to ask Everyone if you had to pick a deck for laic right now what would you lock in and How would you persuade me to also lock that deck in? And mike's been pretty vocal about how good lugia is how solid the flutterman is it's just a good deck But grattan, how about you? um well Obviously again, I really like playing the palkia dustmore deck. It's still like one of my favorite decks I don't think I have to persuade you too much to like switch. Yeah to switch on to that. I think it's really good um If I had to pick a deck right now, it'd actually probably be iron thorns though I really do think that deck is just like Again, it's the the right kind of mindset. I think for like the long tournament. I enjoy playing the deck You can just kind of get really lucky with the coin flips and win matchups that you shouldn't win and things like that um So I would probably just play iron thorns, honestly Okay John, I think I already know already know the answer for you as well, but let's hear it Uh, I mean, I just continue what I just finished saying before, uh the question with reggie drago Uh, I went I went back to I went to dragapult I played dragapult at naic and then after that switched to reggie drago and then I think last time we had like a what would you play I said dragapult And I didn't really feel too good about that after the weekend was over. Um, so I'd probably just go back to reggie drago um, and I think the reason why is um It's one of the most consistent decks right now Which is huge like you don't really have the threat other than maybe against raging bolt of getting donked Raging bolt's a tough matchup, but you still have um radiant charizard. That's the main reason you would still play that card um And you could still pull out the win. Um Enough of the time to where I feel like it's not going to be such a detriment To where I think in all your other matchups You should have agency to do what you want to do to set up to start swinging if you need to swing and then obviously you're able to abuse, uh, one of the best attackers like I talked about in the dragapult ex um Just being able to spread damage and take big knockouts. Um And get around pheasant dipity right now, which I think is a huge thing going in its favor Um, so that'd be my pick Sure And mike i'm going to give you one last chance to audible off of lugia But if not, you know, here's the final Kind of speech in favor of lugia for everyone listening. All right Lukia just goes two two two doesn't matter what you're playing against you go two two two you go take a knockout boss boss That's it And you guarantee it every time with gift energy. It's so easy. That's pretty appealing. I'm not gonna lie. I remember um You sound a lot like steven veresco, um, yeah, I told him to play the guy I know you did But he told me that you did and it's like it's so funny to see you two back You and uh grafton next to each other. I'm, just thinking of uh, grafton and steven playing each other and They circle top. Yeah, and it's like grafton had to play pram. Essentially. I can't I even lost the trivia today to him. I just can't Well, we'll have to have you back on and maybe you can re uh avenge your uh loss in trivia for sure study up For yeah, study up the random who won this tournament who plays six at worlds in 2017 trivia You you should go back and listen to some of the other questions that john and I have asked each other at one point He asked me something related to swala and having to know exactly what sets it was printed in. So You know, good luck That's all Yeah, it's funny it's funny but for sure, um, you know, we obviously want to thank you guys again for coming on the show um before we close things out Did you guys have any shadows that you wanted to make or you know? Maybe let people know where they can find you if they're interested in getting in touch with you or Hearing more about what you have to say Uh, yeah, sure, uh, I post on twitter sometimes on my uh, i'm michael from watt and then uh Yeah, uh, that's pretty much it. Like, you know, it's been cool. I haven't been on like one of these in a while So this is cool Oh, yeah Yeah, I'd say I really appreciate you guys having us on and um, yeah if you want to follow me on twitter Also, it's just at grafton roll roll and that's about it. I don't do too much other stuff Cool well as always you can find john and I on twitter as well John is at john paul orgel and I am at underscore aaron underscore curry And this has been another episode of the battle frontier podcast. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time You