Episode 9: A Shocking Start to the Surging Sparks Format

Hello, and welcome to the Battle Frontier podcast, the show where we aim to help you level up in your competitive journey as a Pokemon TCG player. I'm Aaron Curry. And before I throw it over to John, we got some feedback that people would like some more structure to our show. So we're going to provide you with a little table of contents here at the top of the show. And so we're going to lead off with our story time, of course, where John is going to give us a little bit of a recap of something that we missed last week in his Professor Cup performance from LAIC. And then we'll continue with what we both did in Pokemon and in general for the week before we head straight into our time capsule segment, where John has a really interesting deck. We'll follow that up with our Sacramento regionals results. I'll hit John with some amazing questions during Blaine's quiz show. And we'll close out the show with our predictions of what things are going to look like heading into Stuttgart, Germany this weekend. So John, does that sound good to you? Sounds great. Yeah. Cool. Why don't we lead this off and you tell me about how the Professor Cup went for you back two weekends ago. If I have to. No, I had a good time. I'll pull up the list real quick. As a reminder, while you are pulling that up, what was the format for this event and what was the deck you decided to go with? Yeah. So I'm pulling that up. So the deck I decided to go with is Solrock Lunatone. So the format was all the Pokemon you played with have to be 90 hit points or less. And you can only play three copies of a single card or a type of card in your deck. So only three copies of Research, of Solrock, of Lunatone, et cetera, other than basic energy. So no rule box Pokemon, no rule box cards. Everything has to be 90 hit points or less. And that was about it. The rule of three instead of rule of four. So I tested a little bit with my friend Ben Haines and we made a couple different decks. The deck I brought, I brought two decks to LAIC. I brought a Venomoth Froslass deck, which I had a lot of high hopes in and I had been testing the most with. And then I brought this deck, the Solrock Lunatone deck you have here, which I didn't put as many games in with, but I was like, oh, well, it's like good backup, I guess. And so on the Wednesday before the tournament, the day before the tournament, I was playtesting with John Lucas, one of the other judges that didn't play in the cup, but I know he's a decent player. So I brought up these two decks. He played this deck, I think, and I played the other way or we did it the other way around. But Solrock Lunatone just kept destroying the Venomoth Froslass deck to the point where I was just like, all right, well, I don't really think I have enough confidence in Venomoth Froslass to bring this to the tournament tomorrow, so I'm going to switch off and play Solrock Lunatone. And this is the list I brought. It's pretty basic. I think the only things that were kind of creative in the way I built it, where I put a Hesuian Basculin with Gather the Crew, just to kind of accelerate my board setup, and then Tatsugiri to help dig for supporters. I saw some lists that ran like the Curlia line, and in hindsight, that might have been the better way to go. You have a little more on-board consistency. But I didn't choose to do that because I felt like that put me in a weird spot if I went up against the Venomoth Froslass, like they could bring up the Curlia and I would struggle to retreat it or kind of move it if they played their deck right. So I was like, well, I don't really want to get in that position, I'd rather just have all basics, that way I can switch card or just everything retreats for one. And that's what I ended up going with here. So the list I ran was just trying to focus on getting everything out as fast as possible, and then using Cycling Road and Moonlit Hill to put more energy in the discard pile. Moonlit Hill was kind of good against the Venomoth Froslass deck. It allowed you to heal all your stuff that has abilities and kind of keep them around a little longer. Bravery Charm's broken, Penny was really smart, is a good include. I think I might have wanted to play more Aionas now that I look back at it, but the rest of it was fine. I played, it was a five round tournament with no top cut. I think it was just due to time constraints, they only just did five rounds of Swiss and then kind of like a league challenge. So the first round I played against, I think it was, what was it, it was something, oh, it was a Dusknoir Lost Zone deck. So a deck that used Sableye, tried to use Sableye repeatedly and get stuff in the Lost Zone, like Lost City, and then use Dusknoir to take knockouts. I struggle to remember because I literally opened Solrock and then just a bunch of energy and no other way to set up, and drew pass for four turns until I got KO'd by Double Dusknoir. So I was just like, okay, cool. So that was the start of it. Going 0-1 is always discouraging, but I'm like, that's fine, I can still do well enough to make a top eight. My goal is always to do top eight, I guess, of these things, so you get more into the prizing. Round two, I pair up against a United Wings deck, which was exciting. I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. And it was an Italian guy, which is, there's a lot of international players, I feel like. I was definitely in the minorities, a US player. Most of the players were Brazilian or South American, but there was some players, like this guy was from Italy, and so that was kind of cool. Kind of meeting somebody from another continent. But he played United Wings. I had a really, really good opening, and was able to set up fairly well, but I got to the point where I was up to like, I had one prize left or so, or I had like three prizes left, and he played a Roxanne. And I didn't put down the Tatsugiri before he played Roxanne, like I guess I should have. Like I had the ability to do it before he played the Roxanne, but then after he played Roxanne, I just, I didn't really draw out of it, and I ran out of attackers. Running only three Lunatone, you know, it sucks if you prize one, or one gets knocked out, and then you just have two others on board, and they get knocked out, and you're at the point where I just ran out of attackers, and wasn't able to restabilize my board. And even though his deck was like, weaker than mine, he was able to just come back because I just kind of ran out of gas, like I wasn't able to draw into any, draw supporters. So you know, it was kind of a bummer, after like starting really well, and then you just get like Roxanne, and kind of feel like you lose the game from there. So I started O2, and I'm like, oh, do I even want to keep playing at this point? But I did. You know, it was fun to, you know, meet new players from all over the world, and get to know the professors I'll be working with throughout the event. So I kept playing. I think the next round, I played a guy, and he just had like kind of the same start I had game one, where he just never got anything set up. So I just donk, I got a donk, basically, round three, round four. I want to say I either had a no show, or my opponent was just, I think I had a no show for one of my next rounds, where they just, you know, forgot to drop from the tournament. That happens. So I got a free win. And then the round five, I played against the Slowrock Lunatone Mirror. He ran a cool list with, he ran the Curlia in there, and he ran some more recovery than I did. Like he ran the Lana's Aid, which I think gets back basic energies and Pokemon. We both had slow starts, but my opponent got the first knockout, and he ran Hero's Cape, or whatever the plus 100, and then gives up two prizes. Yeah, Luxurious Cape. Yes, Luxurious Cape, not Hero's Cape. That's an A-spec, so you couldn't run it. Luxurious Cape, and I got to the point where I just couldn't knock it out. Like I didn't have enough energy acceleration, or I couldn't put enough energy on a Lunatone to knock out the thing with Hero's Cape, and then he was able to penny it up. And so I literally just like, all right, man, you got it. Like I can't, you know, keep up in the prize race. So I ended up going two, three, and at that point there was, you know, I think maybe there was six rounds. I said five rounds, but there might have been six, but I just dropped at that point. I'm like, well, I got to go soon. Like the, I think all hands meeting was like at one o'clock, and it was like 1230. And I'm like, I really, I don't really want to like stick around for not getting prizing or anything like that. So I'm just going to go leave and then kind of find my people I'll be working with. So a little disappointing. This format, it didn't feel all that fun to me. You know, I'm sure somebody enjoys it, and it is always fun to like play alternate formats. But this was one of the few times where I was just like, I really wish we just like played something a little more in depth. It felt like the format was limited. It was pretty narrow at the top. There's like four decks like Solrock Lunatone, Venomoth Frostlass, the Festival Lead deck with App Diplon. And I think there's, that was pretty much it. I think there was some United Wings, some other stuff like I talked about. But none of them really did well, except for those three, from what I remember. Some Lost Zone stuff. Sorry. And then the other was like the Sableye deck. So there was some cool stuff, but it was also just like, oh, did your opponent get the first knockout? Okay, cool. You know, I definitely felt less I mean, also, I guess I can't complain, like I was playing a deck that is like the roaring raging bolts of this format, you know, essentially, you're just trying to hit swing first and swing often. But it definitely felt less fun for me than like it had been in the past for some of these formats. And maybe, you know, it's it's tough. Like you can only invest so much time into an alternate format that no one else wants to play. The most fun I ever had playing in alternate formats was they had a Professor Cup where it was just GLC. And I feel like that was fun for me, because there's such an established deep meta, even though it's an alternate format, it was still like, very, very skill intensive. You're playing like I love GLC to begin with, but it felt like you're playing against people that are coming up with cool, creative ideas and playing their favorite GLC decks. But then there was like, also, I don't know if you've ever played in a Professor Cup. I know it might have been a while. I have actually, I got second place back in 2008, when we had a format where I believe we actually did play top cut back then. And I have, I actually may still have it. We got like engraved iPod touches. Oh, nice prizes. That is that is pretty cool. For sure. I know, I know. Super old. No, you're fine. That's super cool. That's super cool. Yeah, most of the cups I have played in there is a top cut, I think just because of the time constraints, there wasn't one for this one. Where was I going? I think the, what I was saying was, this one felt less like fleshed out, which is kind of is what it is. I played like the one before, there was an online one that was really good, where I played like a cloth okey dokey deck, I talked about that earlier on the podcast. That one, that format felt way more open and more like way more decks, more fun stuff. So that was just like a non rulebox format, where you were limited to three different types. So it was like, like GLC, but then you had like GLC and standard, but then you had two other types you could work with. And there was like a rule of two. So that felt like you were kind of constrained a little bit more into playing like off brand, kind of wacky kind of stuff that you wouldn't like I was playing supporters I wouldn't normally play. Sure. Um, so I don't know. It's a it's just it's fun. It's good fun. I do like playing in these tournaments. And I hope to keep going like that's one of my favorite things to do when I go to like regionals and go to ICS now is to play in these formats. Because it definitely challenges you. I'm definitely not the best deck builder. So I definitely lean on Aaron here and some other players I know my area to like, give me feedback because I'm definitely like, I can get started, you know, but like, and I can draw test hands, but I can't, like, I don't really have the possess the depth of knowledge that some of these players like including yourself have to, you know, pull out cards I've never heard of or think of interactions that are really helpful. So but yeah, anyway. So that was the Professor Cup in LA I see I'm sorry, I didn't talk about it. I guess I just kind of deleted it from memory. And then had a really, really busy next three days after that. Well, it's okay. I mean, I had deleted it, or actually just lost it from my memory as well. And it was brought back to us thanks to our lovely comment section by your brother of all people. Yeah. Left us a nice comment on Spotify. Shout outs to Patrick. Thank you, Patrick. He's the guy that got me into Pokemon. He's a lore, john lore, he's he came home and he forced me to play his terrible Gengar deck to my first ever tournament. And I lost all my ratchets except for the last one. And that was just because my opponent saw I was playing Gengar and just conceded on the spot. Nice. Yeah. But now he's the one that kind of let me borrow all his stuff that he didn't want to use. And so I ended up playing Machamp Prime for like a year and a half into into the EX format where Mewtwo is starting and I'm just like, okay, maybe I need to stop playing Machamp Prime. It was bad at that point. It was bad at all points, but it was especially bad when Mewtwo EX was released. Not only did your brother kick off your Pokemon career, as it is, he's also now kicked off our comment section. So hopefully you get some other people following suit. We'd love to interact with you down there. But John, now that we've gone back in time a little bit and talked about what you did a couple weekends ago. I know that you hosted a cup this week, but I'm not sure one, how that went or what else you got up to. So why don't you let me know? Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yep. We had our I did a League Cup League Challenge doubleheader on Sunday. It was a lot of fun. I was kind of unfortunately coming down with like a head cold that Sunday and I still have some remnants of it today. so if you hear me a little more nasally than I normally am that's why but it was fun we had 17 total players I think 13 masters so we had a top four and it was like a weird meta for a cup we had like three or four control decks and then the two decks that ended up going first and second first place was ancient box okay and second place was lost Tina so yeah one of my local players Jacob still well he has been on lost Tina essentially since it came out it's what he got his world's invite with last year and so I guess he hadn't really played much this season so he just still had lost Tina sleeved up from when he played it up worlds essentially and just ended up playing that for this tournament so he did pretty well he funny enough like he lost to the ancient box in Swiss earlier in the tournament and then when he just saw that he was playing it in the finals he just instant conceded he didn't really want to play it out and then him and some other people just ended up cubing afterwards so you know that's is what it is and then yeah we had our challenge right afterwards I was hoping we'd have a little more people stick around for it so attendance did drop down to I think 11 total which is what it is you know I think some people were like oh I can't spend my whole day playing Pokemon or whatever and then yeah some people went and cubed but we still had decent they had a couple people that came in specifically for the challenge so we had I think Pikachu lost on Pikachu played by Sophia Heisman if I'm gonna give him a shout out since I and then Alyssa I forgot the last name Alyssa was the winner for our cup so some cool little the deck that Sophia played was a lost zone Pikachu EX so utilizing the new Pikachu so that was kind of cool to see but yeah it was it was fun I definitely felt like death afterwards and like wanted to go home and die and then yeah Monday was rough and today's been better got some like Sudafed so that helped dry me out a little bit but yeah it's been good Monday League was pretty chill you know nothing too much after being gone for the last two weeks it's just it's still cool to see all your locals you know that's for me that's why I keep doing what I'm what I'm doing with local stuff yeah you know it does take a toll on you to do all these tournaments and go and do all these things but it's definitely worth it when you have like that one player that's new that you're helping them build a deck and they're you're seeing their like eyes light up as they're learning how to play the game and all the cool interactions and make new friends or you just see like the guy that's closer to your age that doesn't have a whole lot of social outlets outside of Pokemon that he's making friends that he normally like it's really hard in your 30s to make their friends so it's cool to see like friends I'm gonna have for the rest of my life locally that I've made through just having my league so that's really that's really been a huge boon shoutout to my league I know some of them listen so you know you guys are the guys are the best and yeah anyway yeah enough about me I just think I spoke about 15 minutes by myself how's your weekend been and how you been I've been good good had a had a challenge last Friday at one of our local shops I'm unfortunately learned that that shop may not be doing Pokemon too much longer just I'm not sure what the reasoning for that is but thankfully like I mentioned a last week show we do have another shop opening up I believe next week and they're gonna try to kick their Pokemon stuff up as quickly as they possibly can so I actually think that I'm gonna have a chance to go talk to that store owner to give some like initial feedback or kind of how as a competitive player I would envision you know seeing things structured or just you know they wanted to know what days do our local players want to have people have game time available or official league play and so being able to have a voice in that is really nice because I've had some difficulty balancing local play at this other store it conflicts with a lot of stuff with me socially and yes it's very difficult to do but made time this last Friday to go play a challenge I too played Lost on Pikachu and actually ended up losing in my last round to Ancient Box because I only got to play one turn my lone Cramorant got donked by a nasty nasty Roaring Moon unfortunately but the aside from the Ancient Box the rest of the tournament was actually pretty cool it's a lot of people playing new stuff there were were a couple people playing Maridon which not really new but updated with the Magneton and the Pikachu and we'll talk a lot of but more about that here in just a little bit saw a couple of Goldengo players with the Togekiss and the Energy Search Pro two Hydreigon decks which are pretty cool and I ended up playing round one so there were not enough juniors and seniors as is often the case at local events so the juniors and seniors got mixed in with masters players and I ended up playing against one of the odd seniors players who clearly was newer to the game doesn't have a really fully fleshed out deck and so I'm having to explain what my abilities do which is not the end of the world just made the game take a little bit longer than it needed to when I was playing against you know a kind of a pile of cards at the end of the day round two played against Maridon and discovered that Maridon just has a rather difficult time dealing with Pikachu EX in and of itself if they can't get an Iron Hands KO on early turns or turns mid game it can really struggle to overcome Lost Box in a lot of circumstances and then played against one of those Hydreigon decks where I was able to do a big Greninja play on turn two and then Sableye some stuff on turn three and he really just never got to set up as a result of that and then that last round I only got to play one turn I drew pass with my Cramorant and summarily lost the game so came in I think third place at the end of that so plus ten points into the void yeah and a prize pack that had actually I think it actually I think it had a Roaring Moon in it of all things so a little salt in the wound there and I I ended up playing in a Pokemon Pocket tournament over the weekend as well on Limitless which is pretty cool those have been blowing up a lot recently it was totally free to enter still fairly time-consuming but the nice thing compared to some of the TCG live events are that individual rounds aren't quite as time-consuming and you are able to play it on your phone so you could take it on the go with you if you really needed to go somewhere and that was something I was able to take advantage of ended up making top 16 in that event it was fun I mean just something to do it'll be interesting to see if that continues to develop as the game goes on I'm not sure if it will but if it does that's pretty cool another another outlet for Pokemon is a win in my book yeah I could definitely see it struggling if you know like the games been out what like two three weeks at this point maybe a little almost a month and yeah it feels pretty stale I'd say at this point you know it's not like it's not a lot of depth but it's like the first set like you know any card game if you've played any other card games the first set it's you know like Lorkana or the Star Wars game like you play it this is fun you know and then that's really all it is for the first set and then the second set comes out third set comes out and starts getting more depth more I don't know interactions more mm-hmm it's just more fun so I'm hopeful that pocket I don't know how deep the gameplay is intrinsically if that'll you know it's definitely not the TCG like the trading card game and that sense but it is fun and yeah like you brought up I think it is much more accessible than Pokemon trading card game is you know playing mobily you don't have to have own the physical cards and then also the games a little more straightforward less time-consuming so I could see I could see like you know it had it rivaling the popularity of the TCG down the road at least in the short term if it hasn't already I think it's already like you know it's blown up just oh yeah the game is out of the gate has made tons of money and as more concurrent viewers on like twitch and YouTube I believe than regular TCG live or even live TCG gameplay does but you know it's a it'll be a matter of seeing whether or not like it's a flash in the pan versus can something that can really stand up to the test of time and that remains to be seen I know that they've already announced the next couple of sets and we'll just have to see how that goes yeah and we'll talk about it a little bit on the podcast I know we struggle not too much with our identity we are Pokemon trading card game main main client like that kind of thing focus but we do both play pocket I'm still trying to get those 45 wins for the battle event they have going on right now I think I'm at 35 so I'm trying to get it done in the next two three days I'll have you know Thanksgiving off so I'll forget it done that day but yeah we both enjoy pocket but yeah I don't I don't I don't have any like I don't think I'd ever like quit playing the TCG just to play pocket or anything like that there's just not enough there at least right not right now but I also played in a tournament I forgot to tell you played in a league challenge Saturday my wife was hanging out with one of her friends so me and another buddy went to a store just south of Richmond and I went there for a league and then I pull up and it's like hey we're having a league challenge today nice cool and the only deck I have built is like old I think I updated my Reggie Drago with Miroslav's list and so I just played Miroslav same 60 John you it was the weekend that surging sparks was legal and you couldn't play a surging sparks card I thought about I shoulda I shoulda looking back at it I'm kind of bummed that I kept Haxorus in and didn't put in the silly Alolan Exeggutor okay that's my only work that's my only regret otherwise I was fine with it and then my buddy came and I had also built Lost Zone Pikachu and he played that he did better than me I think he finished either three I think he finished three and one and I would two one and one my losses being I lost round one to a Lost Zone Pikachu just because I didn't get it I didn't see my canceling Cologne or the Kyurem until super late okay and then I tied against the control deck that probably should have lost two but we just alert like he ran out of time to close the game up because I had to like burn through my V star too early and stuff like that but I was still fun you know it's always fun playing playing competitively you know use that word loosely when you go to a challenge but you know you still I still I still love playing I think I've been judging way more this season but my heart is still as a competitor and I think that's where my mindset comes from even when I'm judging is I'm approaching the game as a competitor so it was fun I think I finished fifth so I got like two prize packs or something like that so I didn't open my prize packs I'm saving them at this point I have enough serious I've opened so I'm just kind of being like a dragon and hoarding everything in a little like tote in the back corner of this office back here so I got like a little mu 210 or something like that from like black and white era and I have like all my prize packs from the last few months in there nice nice and so John we've spent quite a bit of time talking about ourselves and our history this past week why don't we talk about someone else's history in this week's edition of the time capsule segment sounds good so for this week kind of looking at how well my ride on did over the week I'm looking at Andrew strata's first place list from the world championships in 2014 this is and similar to this is kind of like Mariah dawn in the sense that you're running all basic centered attacking deck that seeks to kind of get powered up as soon as possible and start swinging as soon as possible there are some differences I'll go into and this deck compared to Mariah down but there are a lot of similarities here even you know Mariah downs an Arvin centric centric deck this is more draw base but also runs for Skyla to get the item cards at this point that you wanted at this point tool cards were also item cards so you have some items or some tools that you have access to here but the main thing you were using Scala for is for g-booster g-booster is a super strong a spec so prior to this year a specs existed back in the black and white era so 20 about 10 years ago or even longer now and this is one of the most powerful ones ever printed it's specific to this deck essentially as this card reads the Genesect EX this card is attached to you can also use the attack on this card you may play as many item cards that's not important but the attack that it gains access to is g-booster for grass grass colorless it does 200 damage and it says discard to energy attached to this Pokemon this attacks damage isn't affected by any effects on the defending Pokemon so g booster hits for 200 which essentially is one shot in everything in this format this was before we had some of the bigger EXs in the sense of Megas and it was also just paired up with the fact that it has a shred effect meaning it can go through any ability or any effect on the defending Pokemon so if your opponent has like at this point there was some safeguard Pokemon I think there was a Suicune that was released in the same set as Genesis that had Safeguard that saw some niche play. But you had G-Booster and another tool on the Genesect itself that allowed you to get around that Pokemon. Yep, so this card, G-Booster, you played it primarily with the Genesect in this deck. Let me go back. So, okay, so just to give you a rundown real quick of your general strategy, it's a little bit slower. Mariodon has like Electric Generator. You have some energy acceleration through items with Culver's Machine, but primarily what you're trying to do is turn one, just get a Virizion EX down and attach an energy and power up for Emerald Slash. And so most of your turned ones were just attach energy pass, and then turn two, you're trying to use Emerald Slash. Emerald Slash, really, really strong attack. I mean, it sounds really weak now, but you have to remember like the max HP most Pokemon had was 180, Virizion 170. So it was either 170 or 180 for most EXs, and then like Plasma Kyurem, and then there's some stage twos that had maybe 150, I think was the max. So you never really had anything over 180. So the Emerald Slash would set up fairly well. What you would try to do is use Emerald Slash for 50, but also supplement the damage with Muscle Band. It's a tool that was really, really powerful considering how low HP everything was. It's just straight up does all your Pokemon's attacks do 20 more damage. So you're hitting for 70, which sounds weak and it isn't that strong, but has a really, really nice secondary effect to the attack. It says you may search your deck for two Grass Energy, attach them to one of your bench Pokemon, and then shuffle them afterwards. So what you would do, turn one, attach Energy, turn two, use Emerald Slash, and then put two Energy on a Genesect EX. And Genesect is probably one of the best EXs in this format. Has a really, really strong ability, which I'll get into, but the Megalocannon attack pairs really well with Virizion's attack. Megalocannon reads you do for Grass, Grass, Colorless, you do 100 damage, and then does 20 damage to one of your opponent's bench Pokemon. Don't apply weakness resistance for bench Pokemon. So what the strength of the deck was, was just using Emerald Slash, setting up whatever you have in the active. So you can knock out a lot of basic evolving Pokemon, and then you can also, like, say your opponent has a Darkrai in the active. You could Emerald Slash for 70, and then hit it with Genesect for 100, and then move it to the bench with this ability, I'll get to in a sec, and then ping that Darkrai on the third turn or fourth turn of attacking, rather, with the kind of chip damage from Megalocannon, the 20 damage on the bench. But probably what makes Genesect one of the most powerful EXs printed, in addition to the G booster we talked about, it has an ability, Red Signal. When you attach a Plasma Energy from your hand to this Pokemon, you may switch your opponent's bench Pokemon with his or her active Pokemon. So we're familiar with Catcher. This is post-Erratic Catcher, I believe, where you were forced to use boss's orders or a Life Standard in this format. Just straight up, whenever you attach a Plasma Energy, which is this guy, this is just probably, it's a bog standard, just colorless energy, but it has just some branding of Team Plasma on there. So there's a lot of interactions that Plasma Energy had, and including Red Signal. So you would go Emerald Slash, power up your Genesect, and then turn, after that, you would go Attach Plasma, Megalocannon, or if you needed to, you could just use G booster. You could Skylark for the G booster. And then there's a lot of other cards in here that are just kind of consistency-centered. You would run Sky Arrow Bridge. It's a stadium card that just says each of your basic Pokemon, the retreat is one less. So you could, if you started out with a Genesect in the active and you wanted a Virizion, or you just needed to retreat into your Genesect and wanted to keep the energy on the Virizion for later, Sky Arrow Bridge would help you kind of conserve all that energy. So you also have Cholrus Machine. Some versions of this deck, like Igor Kosta's list, I think runs more Cholrus Machines. This only ran one. But this was just a nice little added supplement. The G booster attack makes you discard two energy. So you could, in theory, discard Grass Cholrus, or Grass Grass from the Genesect, and then just attach a Grass and use a Cholrus Machine to power the Genesect back up to use G booster again. So just kind of a lot of different synergistic properties. And then you have Jirachi, which is a nice kind of support Pokemon. It's probably one of the weakest HP-wise EXs ever printed in this format. It has only 90 hit points, which is pretty, it's very, very weak, but it has a really good ability. It's pretty similar to Lumineon V. It's called Stellar Guidance. When you play this Pokemon from your hand to your bench, you may search your deck for a supporter card, reveal it, put it in your hand, and then shelf your deck afterwards. So we had to play that. Well, we didn't have to, but we played that to get access to Skyla, to then go and get G booster, or you could get Skyla to get an energy with Professor's Letter to attach it to Virizion for turn one. Professor's Letter is like a, similar to Earthen Vessel, but without the downside of, or effect of having to discard first. So it just says, search your deck for two basic energy, reveal them, put them into your hand. And yeah, the rest of it, like I said, is mostly centered around consistency. You only run four Pokemon search cards in Ultra Ball, but that's fine because you only run like a very small number of basic Pokemon. And then you run Energy Switch primarily to move energy off Virizion, to repower up a Genesect after you've G boosted, or if you have a damaged Genesect in the active, you can power up another Genesect with Energy Switch. So this just adds some versatility to the deck. You know, Emerald Slash forces you to attach all your energy to one Pokemon on the bench. So this allowed you to spread that out or to kind of conserve energy. Like most of the time, you weren't really trying to attack with Virizion too much later on in the game. So you would want to Energy Switch off and then move into another Genesect on the bench. So you'd go like, you'd usually go Virizion, Genesect, then keep attacking with Genesects for the rest of the game. There's Town Map, which is always a fun card. Just says turn all your face, turn all your prize cards face up. Those cards remain face up for the rest of the game. So that just allowed you to get, like say your G booster is prized, you're able to play Town Map and pull that out of the prizes faster than trying to pull it out kind of blind. So that was important. We have Sycamore, which is similar to Professor's Research and which is similar to Iona, but instead of shuffle, put your hand to the bottom of the deck, you just shuffle your hand into your deck and then draw for how many prize cards you have. Skyla, I think it's, is it still on standard? I forget. No, it's gone. It's been reprinted at one point during like the- Sword and Shield. Or the break sets, I thought, or maybe, was it in Sword and Shield? It was in Sword and Shield. Okay. But it was literally the same card. Just search your deck for a trainer card. Yeah, it hasn't changed. I think we did have it as recently as last year, but I just didn't see a lot of support because Eerta is just better. And then now Arvin's just better, allowing you to get two things. But this was before that we had Skyla. Shadow Tree is one of the coolest supporters in my mind. It's pretty silly looking, or it doesn't seem that good. It says, put a Team Plasma card from your discard pile into your hand, which sounds okay, but you'd obviously get G-Booster back, but you could also do a lot of cool interactions with it with the Kulriss machine, because all these are Team Plasma. All the blue border cards are Team Plasma. So you could get a Kulriss back from your discard pile, which I'll get into in a sec. But the main reason I liked it is getting the plasma energy to then use and attach to Genesect to then red signal and take your last two prizes or whatever with that. And then Kulriss is probably one of the most broken supporters ever printed. I'd say it's fairly balanced in some ways, but especially most modern competitive formats, it just feels like whenever both players are filling up their bench, it is probably one of the most broken supporters. It's played in GLC still too today because it's so strong. It says shuffle your hand into your deck, then draw a number of cards equal to the number of benched Pokemon, both yours and your opponent's. So a lot of times you would have three or four benched Pokemon and your opponent would have three or four. So you're usually getting seven to eight with that, which is really, really strong. It's just one of the most consistent, like it's a good consistency card. You have enhanced hammer to counteract double colorless energy, which was really prevalent in a lot of Yveltal decks at this time. I think, yeah, Yveltal was in format. And then also good against other stuff. I think Aromatisse was in format. So you had some kind of stuff with that, but mostly just for double colorless for Yveltal, if I'm honest. Let's see. I think that's about it for the most part. Oh, I guess Mr. Mime, similar to Manaphy in our current format, just has the ability to bench barrier, prevents all damage done to your benched Pokemon. So this is what got first place. There's some other variations of this list that we could talk about. I don't really want to go into too much detail about it, but if we just look at second place, this is, I played in a 2014 format tournament at NAIC last year on that Sunday after the tournament was over. And I played this list. This is Igor Costa, who got second place, who's, I don't think he plays anymore, but he was a very, very good player for a long time. And this ran Driflim, which had a really cool ability, or, sorry, attack. Shadow Steal does 50 times the amount of special energy in your discard pile. So it was like that, and you could play it with Shaman. This one didn't run Jirachi. This, like I said, runs a more Coler's machine, runs less Sky Arrow Bridge, doesn't run a Super Rod, which is interesting. So there's just a lot of different ways you can play this deck. But if we look at our top eight for this event, let's see, one, two, three, four, five of the top eight were Virzion Genesect. So it just dominated this world's format very, very strongly. But yeah, that's my time capsule for today. I ended up, if I remember at that 2014 format tournament, I got top four with it. So it's still fun. It reminds me a lot of Maridon, like I said. It doesn't really seek to do a whole lot more than what it's built to do. Like you have a lot of versatility with G-Booster and with Red Signal. And then I also forgot to mention, Virzion EX has one of the best abilities, which is... Verdant Wind. Verdant Wind, yes, thank you. Which says all your Pokemon that have any grass energy attached to them cannot be affected by special conditions, which normally wouldn't be that big of a deal. But this is the heyday of Hypnotoxic Laser. Right. And also Acelgor was a thing. So Hypnotoxic Laser kind of ran rampant where it's an item card that automatically poisons your opponent's Pokemon, and then you flip a coin if heads, they're sleep. And so Virzion's like, okay, we're not gonna worry about that. And you're also not gonna be able to poison me. So it just kind of made that card a dead card. And then, yes, like I said, Acelgor did really well, I think in seniors or juniors of that same world's format with Acelgor Gothitelle. And we see that do really well. So yeah, so Virzion just kind of shuts that off. But yeah, I forgot to ask, do you have any things you wanna add before we close out this segment? No, I think that you summed that pretty well. I hadn't played, that was actually a year after I had effectively retired, more or less, and moved on to initially start some more scholastic efforts. I was doing my master's degree at the time. And so I still popped up to DC and played in the LCQ, and I played in the Romantese box deck, which was a lot of fun. So yeah, the Enhanced Hammers for sure would be impactful in that matchup. You had special energy, like a rainbow at the time. So you put a single damage counter and it acts as every type. You have prism energy, which is a free rainbow, but only for basics. And so there were some other cool decks that were a part of this format that hopefully we'll get to talk about at some point. But it was far and away dominated by Virzion Genesect at the end of the day. Yeah, this world's format, it definitely felt like, and then I think Virzion Genesect was pretty strong even moving forward from there. We see it pop up again in the next World Championships 2015. It was still relevant for the most part. And then yeah, it was pretty much relevant the whole time from when it was printed. Just the consistency, the pairing of those two Pokemon was super strong. And it's one of the most consistent decks in this format where a lot of times you just didn't have a lot of good Pokemon search and Pokemon setup. Yeah, it was like Nest Ball didn't exist at the time. Yeah, the supporters are not super strong. We see research, every deck ran for it. for research, or sorry, for Sycamore, for N, and then kind of figured it out from there. Like this was before we had VS Seeker. So we were just kind of stuck trying to draw our supporters for turn. And there was times where you just couldn't draw a supporter in your whole, like N was so much more powerful because there wasn't a lot of onboard based draw in this format. You had Jirachi to search out a supporter, but that was really about it. There wasn't a whole lot of Pidgeot or Barrel or something like that where we see today. So anyway, yeah, it's a fun format. I think it reminds me a lot of Maraidon where your strategy is based on getting strong, basic attackers set up as fast as possible, and then just swinging and using all the different attacks they have. And it has a lot of similarities I feel like you can draw. So that's my time council for today. Well, that was lovely, John. I think that like you said, this was similar in your mind to Maraidon. So we would have to obviously compare it to the winner of this weekend being that Maraidon deck. But before we talk about the winner and overall top eight results, we should take some time and look at the meta from the event in Sacramento. We had about 1700 players playing in the event. I know this graphic says 1692. Limitless is reporting slightly higher than that. I'm not sure if they're just pulling directly from RK9 or what the deal is, but it's close enough. So they played eight rounds of Swiss day one, four rounds day two, and then played into top cut. And we see a trend break now that we're in this new format instead of Stellar Crown. People have finally gotten on the Regidrago V-Star train, and we see Regidrago rise up and overtake Raging Bolt as the most popular deck in day one at 13%. Now Raging Bolt is still very present, very popular, but now at 11% from what it used to be the 1450% range. Charizard interestingly has really popped up here at almost 9% of the meta. And then like we talked about that Lost Sun Pikachu deck being categorized here as Lost Sun box comes in at 6.5% in fourth place, followed by the 5% Lugia share and a equal 5.2% Gardevoir EX share to round out our first six. Now, unfortunately there is no best of the rest graphic, but we can still see how these decks fared transitioning into day two. After those eight rounds for day one, we see the day two graphic and our top four decks remain the same with some either slightly or largely increased meta percentages. Regidrago jumps all the way from that 13% up to 17% of the day two competitive field. Raging Bolt gets a little bit of a bump up to 12.5%. Charizard gets about a 1% bump up to 9.5%. Lost Sun got less than a 0.1% bump, but still remained in fourth place. Gardevoir got a little bit of a bump up to fifth place at 6.2%. And Goldengo makes a surprise appearance at 5.59% as the sixth most popular deck in day two. So we get a nice mix here of decks that were popular and good in the previous format. Some decks that were popular and good in that format are not present at all, namely Tarapagos. And then we see the fall off from Lugia from day one to day two. And then we get the rise up of the interesting decks that got some new tools like Lost Sun and like Goldengo in this meta share. John, what do you make of this? Just seeing all these numbers? Yeah, I think we were talking a little bit before the podcast started. I think people maybe didn't really feel confident moving forward with some of the newer stuff that came out and said, oh, well, you know, Regidrago still seems like the best deck in format and just one LAIC. I'm going to bring that to this tournament. And we see that a lot here. And I think that was reflected in the final cut we'll get into in a minute. But I don't know, it's a little surprising to see Lugia fall off so hard after it's been really strong. I don't feel like it lost a whole lot, maybe just the matchup spread got worse, or I don't even know. I'm interested to hear why you think Lugia fell off so hard. And Tarapagos too, the fact that it didn't do well. I mean, maybe those just struggle against Lost Sun box, I could say. Especially Lugia and Tarapagos, that would make sense too. You know, they don't really have easy ways to knock out Pikachu. Or they don't have easy ways if Charizard's moving up in meta percentage. Plus, you know, Tarapagos might struggle against Charizard, trying to knock out that big 338 point Pokemon. But yeah, to see Goldengo sneak on there, it's kind of cool. I definitely wouldn't have predicted that. It's yeah, it's one of those decks that like, you see it like it got a top four at LAIC, which I thought was, you know, interesting, but it definitely was just like, oh, okay, wacky Goldengo makes a deep run. It's definitely not like one of those decks where I'm just like, Oh, yeah, Goldengo got so much from this set. Like I got a couple cool tools. And I've seen some players I know that are in like my local discords, talking about Goldengo more and more. And I mean, I guess like, I don't know, maybe that maybe the togepi did make it or the togekiss did make a huge difference. Maybe like the A spec really did kind of pull it out and say I will move it up from C tier to B tier, you know, or whatever you want to call it. But no, I, I'm a little surprised that more players didn't try to play new stuff. You know, usually we'll see like, new deck fever for the first few regionals for format. And other than Lost Stonebox, I can say that we really didn't see that too much for this tournament. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that LAIC was in a different format. Like if we had seen LAIC be the surging sparks format, I could say that yeah, we probably see a very different meta analysis coming into looking at Sacramento. And because of that LAIC was another format. And like top players were focused more primarily on doing well at LAIC. And then they have to transition right into Sacramento, they might, you know, you pick up Lost Box, where you're only really putting in Pikachu, and the rest of the deck stays the same. Or you play rigid Drago, because it's like, well, that deck's still really good. I might just put in the Alolan Exeggutor and then kind of move forward with it. But like, yeah, we really didn't see like wholesale new decks for this weekend. And I think that's fine. Like, I don't think... I'm hopeful that moving forward, we do see innovation, and we do see new stuff. And I think we will. I think we'll talk about it a little bit more in the next few segments. But yeah, I'm not too surprised. And if we go to top eight, I think we see a lot of these meta analysis move into the final standings with rigid Drago, making five of the top eight spots. But the I think most surprising thing about this tournament for me, was to see the Mariadon finals, kind of coming out of nowhere. I know we, we talked a little bit about Mariadon getting better with the addition of Pikachu, but neither one of us I think was super hot on this deck, super high up going into like this format. I thought that Mariadon's still good, but not great. And I think to see this was kind of a shock. How do you feel about it? I agree with you. I think that this top eight in particular plays out very well for Mariadon. I do think Mariadon has a fairly strong rigid Drago matchup, given that rigid Drago often wants to go first, and Mariadon is okay playing second into that matchup. So you can either go first and get your board set up to knock out a rigid Drago on turn two, or if you go second, sometimes you can knock out that rigid Drago or Ogre Pond before they're able to really get their board set up and take advantage of things. And I think that, obviously we didn't see Mariadon on the graphic, but I do have to imagine that there was an increased percentage of Mariadon played at this event. And I think that that plays a role, like you mentioned, into why Lugia would have fallen off a little bit. I also think, like you said, the Pikachu in Lost Zone would also be rather difficult for Lugia to overtake. They'd have to kind of either boss around it consistently, and then hopefully use iron hands for some of your extra prizes, and you may not be able to get there. But for this top eight in particular, we, I believe, I can't remember if it was Landon or Kenneth, but prior to the finals, one of these players played rigid Drago in top eight and top four. And then the other one played rigid Drago in top eight, and then Goldengo in top four. And you just, in particular, I believe John Ang was playing against Landon, I think, or maybe it was Kenneth, I honestly can't remember off the top of my head, in top eight. And I know John bricked in one of those two games, but that's something that happens sometimes. And Mariadon as an aggressive deck, similar to Raging Bolt in that regard, is something that can really take advantage of that if you leave them the opening to do so. And now it has the tools where previously the deck would kind of fall apart, they could maybe take that KO on turn one, but then if you were able to respond and knock out their first attacker, they would struggle to keep going. And now they have things like the Magneton from the new set, the ability to play area zero, field their bench super wide, send their deck out of all of the basics that they need to using that tandem unit ability. You have the Latias EX, so things can't necessarily get boss stalled like your iron hands or your second iron hands, and you get to bring things like Raichu V back into the fold. And that was really the thing that the deck was missing. You would have a knockout that you could take on a basic Regidrago V or an Ogre Pawn EX with Photon Blaster as an example, and then your opponent would knock out that Mariadon. And you say, oh, well now unless I hit two energy off of two separate generators and a TAS return, I'm not knocking this Regidrago out, and presumably you've already used a generator for that first Mariadon, well now I only need one generator because I can knock out my own Magneton, load three energy onto the board, and I only have to hit one energy off that generator because I still have my manual attachment for turn, to get the five requisite energy to do 300 damage and knock out your V-star. And then that puts the pressure back on the Regidrago player to try to rebuild something that's going to require multiple resources like Energy Switch. And it just becomes a problem that is very difficult for the Regidrago deck to overcome when their deck is still so thick. Just looking at it real quick, he played, Jonning played Kenneth Gilman, Top 8. But yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I've played a decent amount of, it wasn't a good matchup before, I'd say, for Regidrago. With Gudra maybe it gets a little easier, a little better. But honestly, a lot of times Mariadon's just trying to boss around whatever V-star wasn't active. You always have Ogre Pawns, you always have Fezadippi, you always have some two-prize attacker that they can boss up and knock out with Mariadon EX. I am surprised that Goldengill wasn't able to beat Mariadon. Maybe to me, I'm playing the matchup in my head and I'm thinking, oh wow, how does Mariadon reach that 260 HP a little bit? But I guess you're right, you do have the reach potential there. And then I guess, I don't know, I think if they start Palkia, it's really bad. Or if Goldengill misses a beat, they can start using Iron Hands early. And then yeah, you can go Iron Hands twice in the game and then yeah, take that final KO with Raichu or something like that. So there's definitely more routes you can accomplish now with that Magneton to power up your board a lot better. And yeah, I think the deck just gained a lot of, like, just more strength. The deck was already consistent. It's probably one of the most consistent, if not the most consistent decks in this format. Tandem Unit is such an impressively powerful ability. And then we now have Pikachu. We had Mewtwo, but I think Pikachu is just a better attacker. If you start Pikachu, you can retreat it and put up, in this case, the Magnemite to be the one prize attacker that you can just pivot into. And if they don't knock it out, then you can knock it out yourself and power stuff up. But having one retreat versus two is always relevant. And you know, not so much now that you have Latias, but yeah, just looking at this list here from, I think this is Landon's. Both lists run Secret Box as their A-Spec of choice, which I think is a slight departure from what we've seen Maraudon lists in the past play. I think more and more basic attacking decks like Roaring Moon and Maraudon. I think Secret Box is having its moment now after LAIC. We saw a lot of Secret Box played in Garde and Henry Chow's lists. We saw it played in Charizard more and more. Now, yeah, we see it in Maraudon here. And I think it makes a lot of sense. Like you can Arvin turn one, Secret Box turn one. And normally like Arvin, if you only have one Arvin in hand, it feels bad because you're like, oh, I need another supporter for next turn. And I can't really get that with Arvin, but now you can Arvin for Secret Box and then just find a way to like, now you can chain your turns together. You can have more consistency from turn to turn, and then you have more just pop-off potential essentially. I don't know. What are your thoughts looking at this list? I think I want to hear your perspective on it. Yeah. I don't know if you, have you played any games with it or thought about Maraudon much in the last couple days? I have not played games with it. I've played a few games against it, actually quite a few games against it. And the deck is definitely powerful. Like you said, if you're able to just play a nest ball and get a Maraudon out, suddenly you get to essentially buddy, buddy Poffin plus for your other Pokemon and get the ball rolling. I think you get a lot of advantages from the fact that you still have some consistency cards in the form of your Maraudon. Raikou V still has the fleet-footed ability in addition to being something that gets to double down on your area zero under-depth synergy by doing extra damage for your extra wide bench. It's a forest sealstone target. Raichu's a big... nuke, that you can just blow up whatever your opponent has active. The Pikachu's Resolute Heart ability allows it to sometimes serve as just a block for a turn if you don't want to give your opponent a prize, and they would have to gust around it to achieve that. And like you said, you have things like 4 copies of Boss's Orbs, that mean the deck plays 0 draw supporters, because you understand that you can squawk on turn 1, you can mute or refill your hand, you can raikou for cards, your deck's going to be thinned out by tandem units so you should only be drawing into what you need, you have Pheasandipity when your opponent takes knockouts, and just, it cannot be overstated how strong the combination of Mew EX and Pheasandipity are together, and essentially make Iono and Roxanne cards that don't matter unless you are setting up a multi-prize turn but not taking a knockout. And this is a deck that can oftentimes punish you, even if you do do something like that. Just because a lot of the attackers are very low-maintenance, or very easy to set up off the back of one electric generator. Like you said, Secret Box, super strong card, I don't think I can sing this card's praises enough at this point, as long as Forest Sealstone exists, I think that this card is really, really good. That's a good point. And just the ability to go, like you obviously, you need the Stadium, it gives you the excuse to only run 2 copies instead of 3, you get to get another shot, like if you Arvin for I don't know, Secret Box, Rescue Board so you can retreat, then you can Secret Box for Sealstone's Stadium, Electric Generator, and a Boss or Arvin for next turn. And all of a sudden you're kind of off to the races and have the ability to really just explode out of the gate. And I don't know, it's just, it is strong, it's powerful, I think that it does have some shortcomings in a few specific matchups, I think that Lost Zone has the potential to be a little bit hairy if you don't get a turn 1 Iron Hands off. Similarly, I think if you don't manage to knock out a Regidrago on turn 1, you could struggle into that game, just because they do have the potential to Phantom Dive, knock out your Magnemite, which could be kind of a big deal. So there's definitely some counterplay, this deck is not by any means the absolute end-all be-all BDIF, but it was very strong this weekend in particular, because I think that decks like Maridon, decks like Raging Bolt, are, can be a little bit more linear, Maridon's nice because it does have a few more options than Raging Bolt does, but because they do have a little bit more of a linear factor, they have a lot of raw power built into them, they can take advantage of underdeveloped and unprepared fields. For sure, yeah I mean, like this is going to be one of the most consistent decks you can play at a tournament, so I feel like any regionals you go to, that's always a goal is to just be able to play more games, and Maridon allows you to do that. I don't know if you looked at the other list, for EC, Kenneth Gilman's list? It's a little bit different. Yeah, there's a couple things I wanted to talk about with it. You know, it's running a lot of the same kind of synergy with it, only one Arvin, and then a focus on Irida was interesting to me, which I kind of like. You know, Arvin's really strong, especially with Secret Box, but like you said, a lot of times you don't really want another tool, you can go Secret Box, and then with Irida, and then get Radiant Greninja or Iron Bundle here. And yeah, like obviously, there's an argument to be said. I mean, both of those supporters, Arvin and Irida, have very like high diminishing returns. Exactly. Like, like after turn one, turn two, you really don't want to, like, you're not, you're playing it for the item effect, you're not really getting a tool, you're not really getting a water Pokemon. So I think it's fine to play a mix of them, or in this case, the three Irida and one Arvin. But yeah, I think turn one, like getting the Radiant Greninja is super strong. Like you can go Irida turn one, get Greninja, get Secret Box, and then you go, okay, discard an energy with Greninja, draw two cards, and then maybe get one of the pieces of the puzzle you wanted before you Secret Box and that way you can, or something you can discard with Secret Box, as opposed to just a tool card, where, you know, sometimes you have to discard it with Secret Box, now you can, okay, discard an energy, you're always gonna have an energy in your hand, with 15 basic energies, or 16 in the other case of Landon. So you're always gonna have that energy to discard primarily, and then, yeah, you can find more stuff to discard with Secret Box, whether it be like, yeah, I don't know, like a Squawk after turn one or something like that. But anyway. Just cards you don't need in that matchup, it could be extra supporters, it could be extra ball search cards, because once you're able to get Marite on set up, a lot of times you don't need access to those cards. Yeah, one thing I thought was interesting was Kenneth's list includes Bloodmoon or Seluna while Landon's list did not, and I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? Like to me, why would you not play Bloodmoon or Seluna in this format? Like it's probably one of the best basic attackers we've seen for a long time. Yeah, I'm really not sure. I think that, I guess, my guess would be that Landon was just hoping that if anything was larger than what Raikou could knock out, that Raichu would be able to do the job. Yeah. And was just kind of all in on that basket. I'd have to go back and do a deep dive on comparisons between the lists. I know that like, Kenneth has one less tool card, he doesn't have the Rescue Board, he's got one less ball card, but has the Greninja, has the Ursula, and has the Rotom V, which I think is really interesting as well, which gives you another turn one mode where if you just tandem unit for Rotom and Iron Hands, attach to Iron Hands, and go find three cards with Rotom, or get Magnemite Rotom, go draw three cards, obviously it's a liability sitting on your bench, but it gives you the ability to be a little bit more proactive, which I think it's rewarded a lot of times. Yeah, and that's kind of a deck you're not too worried about bench management because you're running that area zero, you're like, okay, cool, I'll just bump it like, you know, bump area zero or like, you know, whatever. Yeah, you have the ability to just fill up your bench and not really care too much about liabilities as you would like in a Reggie Drago deck where you're not really running that stadium. Yeah, both lists are unique, they do their own thing. And I mean, both are, excuse me, both are very consistent, both are centered around, you know, Arvin or Irta. I like, I think I lean toward Kenneth's list a little bit more, but I don't know, I haven't really played with either one. So I definitely want to do that at some point. But I don't know. Yeah. To move on from that. Yeah, let's talk about the other kind of surprise deck in top four with Goldengo. Yeah, so we see Goldengo got a few upgrades in this set. We know that it got the new minor Aaron running Gimme Ghoul, very like minor tangential, you know, upgrade in a sense. But you do get the ability to go search for two energy cards if you need to attack a Gimme Ghoul. The other kind of really interesting, the first, the biggest, most powerful upgrade and the reason why we see this rainbow of energies in the energy section of Victor's deck is this Energy Search Pro Ace spec that just lets you search your deck for any number of basic energy cards of different types. So if you draw it early enough and you have not drawn any of these extra energies, you can play an item card, search your deck for eight energy and be ready to go with the Make It Rain on that following turn. Which is something that we noted during our set review, I believe that Goldengo would struggle with very frequently, is getting that big KO on turn two. And sometimes it can be really difficult to assemble five energies. Well, now all you have to do is Irida or Cypher Maniac, put your Energy Search Pro on top and you are off to the races. Yeah, it's so good. I mean, it thins your deck out too, so much, you know, when you have, you're just taking eight cards out of your deck and you're putting them in your discard pile, like, and then especially, you know, with Goldengo, you got the onboard draw, it feels like you're almost like once you set up, like, what do you, you know, if you, if you take the prize lead, you're never losing the game. I don't think, unless you're boning it, like, I mean, there's not like, they can't hand disrupt you enough. They can't really, I mean, knocking out Goldengo's, okay, you know, it's a one energy attack. You just need to hit your superior energy retrievals throughout the game when you're you're chilling. We see some other cool stuff in this list, let's focus on Togakiss, right? Sure. Yep. Yeah. And we've seen some Goldengo lists opt to play other stage twos in the past, like Dusknoir. And so in this tournament, instead, Togakiss has kind of been the new poster child for the stage two partner for Goldengo with its Wonder Kiss ability, allowing you to take extra prize cards when you take a knockout on your opponent's active by flipping heads on this ability. And I saw people start to put this in this deck immediately when the set came out. And I honestly can say I thought it was a joke. I said, there's no way that is the optimal card to go in your deck. There's got to be a better use of those two or four spots if you include the rare candies as well. But I may be coming around on it. Obviously, it's a very powerful ability. If you're able to flip heads twice and you knock out two EXs or two Vs, the game's over. You win the game in two knockouts. It's essentially an iron hands, but it's, you know, disguised as a Goldengo. And you get those opportunities. Like if they're knocking out Togakiss, they're only taking one prize. And I think that that's actually really huge at the end of the day, too. But the Energy Surge Pro frees up deck slots because you no longer have to run four copies of Earthen Vessel. So you have more room to put in these extra cards to add more power to your deck without sacrificing your consistency. It's pretty neat. It's a good point. Yeah. And we don't see the Palkia line that we've seen in a lot of Goldengo in the past. Because we decided to play eight different energy types, we're no longer centered around the water and metal only build of Goldengo. So you do lose access to Greninja. But yeah, I think Togakiss kind of makes up for that, right? Greninja was great at like those one prize decks kind of helping the prize trade in your favor. Goldengo really struggles against one prize decks, primarily like if you're playing against a cloth or against a raging like Ancient Box or Lost Box deck, I could see it really having a hard time. So Togakiss maybe you get heads or like if you take five knockouts over the course of the game, you know, all you need is one heads over those five. And now you get a prize advantage as opposed to if they're taking two shots, like if you're trading one for two, I guess what's the way I want to put this, if they're having to two shot your Goldengo and you're going, okay, knockout, knockout, knockout, all you need is like one heads and you take, you pull ahead in that prize exchange. Exactly. And that's really, really powerful. I think it makes a lot of sense if you're thinking about, okay, well, I'm cutting the Palkia. Palkia itself wasn't that really powerful for Goldengo. It was more of a liability in a lot of matchups. You didn't really want to put the 220 hit point V in play, 220 or 210, I forget. Thank you. 220 hit point, because a lot of stuff can reach that fairly easily, you know, and Maridon especially has no problem with that. You already have Fez and Nipity, but you can kind of wait to put Fez and Nipity down to where you're like, okay, well, I'm taking a prize lead here. I can put Fez and Nipity in that way. If my opponent does take a knockout, I can draw three cards or I get the nest ball and this runs Fortnite stretchers. So if they do knock out Fez and Nipity, I can just get it right back. But there's a lot of cool stuff with this list. It's well thought out. And that's, I think, partly as to why it did really well. You can tell that a lot of thought had been put into it. I like the bundle a lot, especially with the Fortnite stretcher. You're only running one boss, so running bundle and then Fortnite stretchers just feels like a cheat code in a lot of ways. But yeah, the rest of it makes a lot of sense to me. I could see it struggling against a control deck and something like that, where you only run the one cancelling clone. I could see... I mean, why do you think they still run one cancelling clone at this point? Is it just because you can... It's for Pikachu. Oh, true, true, true. You just have to have it with a deck like this or you're never going to knock it out in one hit and then you fall too far behind. That's a good point. I think I could see the merit of including something like Siling Pal Pad. I don't know specifically what I would cut. I like the Thornton a lot here, but I also think that there's an argument to taking it out. Sure. I think the Thornton is really sneaky cool in this deck. It allows you to use Fez and Nipity and then get it off the board. And yeah, either set up a Togekiss or set up a Goldengo if all your gimmickles got wiped out. I know, like you mentioned, the liability factor, the Fez and Nipity, and I know that ultimately that was why Victor ended up losing in top four, was being forced to bench Fez and Nipity against one of those Maridon decks and being in kind of a checkmate scenario because of it. Saying, well, I either lose if I don't do this or I put it down and you're going to be able to knock it out if you have a boss. And of course, when you see these Maridon decks with three or four bosses in them, they've always got it. They've always got it. When their deck's like 10 cards and four, like three of those 10 are boss, they always got boss, man. It's tough. Yeah. So a little, fell a little short. I felt like it had a decent shot at like winning after seeing it make top eight. I'm like, Oh, that has good matchups against Regidrago, obviously. And then yeah, it can beat Maridon consistently, I'd say. But yeah, it definitely, um, you know, I don't know, stuff doesn't always go your way in top cut. It's single elimination. You don't always get like a second chance. All it takes is like one misstep or one bad bench or one, you know, bad starter, uh, to kind of swing the match. Um, so then rounding out top four and I'm not going to bother looking at the other Regidrago list. None of them are particularly different from each other, uh, just as a like forewarning the stadium choice. The stadium choices are a little different here and there, but some players were playing the whole time. That's kind of funny. Okay. Because Brent didn't have time to test between LAIC and here, so I'm going to cut him some slack. Very impressive to still play. at your LAIC second place list, I think top eight. Top tier player. But the big development here, we've seen a lot of players adopt the Miloslav technology, bringing the Hesuyan Gudra into their deck. And then we saw a lot of players adopting the Silly Exeggutor in their deck this weekend. With the Tropical Frenzy attack, allowing you to set up backup Regidragos to maybe do consecutive Kirim turns, or the Swingings Fiend to be able to get around cards like Mimikyu or Conerstone Ogre Pawn, or to maybe just knock out a 290 HP Raging Bolt, because it's big and it's in the way. You have options and you've made the, they have really adopted the toolbox approach, rather than saying, I'm going to Phantom Dive almost every single turn. And we see the cut down to one copy of Dragapult in the deck now. I like the addition of Terra Orb as an additional consistency card that allows you to find Ogre Pawn and Dragapult or Exeggutor, and be able to discard the latter two, or just set up your field a little bit better with the Ogre Pawn. I think that's a really cool card in this deck right now. I agree. I'm not sold on Pokestop. I think that Pokestop's popular enough in a lot of other decks like Raging Bolt and Maridon. No, not Maridon, I didn't say that. But I think it helps Maridon more than it helps you as the Regidrago player. And I think that the deck still probably needs a Jamming Tower to reliably beat Raging Bolt. Maybe the Exeggutor is enough. I have not played enough Regidrago, but I don't know. Yeah, I think I'm with you. I'm particularly not too fond of Pokestop. I mean, I get it, like it just allows you to get that dig for that energy switch which you need to finish your combo out. But a lot of times you just get kind of dumpstered on with it, like you get rid of a boss, like your second Regidrago V-Star, and like, I don't know. And energy even sometimes can be just backbreaking. Your second fire or something like that, right? And you're just like, cool, I guess I have to use my V-Star turn two, as opposed to not. I don't know, it's a love-hate relationship I'm sure most players have at this point with the card. But I do like a lot of the, like, I don't know how good Alolan Exeggutor is, it's kind of funny. And I think that has some merit to it. Having to flip a coin to knock out either the active or a benched basic Pokemon. A lot of the meta right now is basics. I mean, we see Raging Bolt was still super popular. This list, I think, is kind of the best of both worlds. We saw Miroslav just say, I'm gonna take on Alta Raging Bolt. This one maybe is trying to shore up the match a little bit more. We do see the Jamming Tower got cut, but the Exeggutor just gives you that ability to just one-shot the threat, essentially. And you still run the Radzard, which, I don't know, I think with two Fire Energy, it seems so sketchy to me. Like, not being able to find the Fire Energy as much as possible. This is still running the two Rods, as opposed to Miroslav's two SCR, one Night Stretcher, which I think makes sense if you're running Radzard. But other than that, yeah, I think this is not quite a bog-standard Regidrago list, but it's pretty close. Just kind of cut Haxorus, add Alolan Exeggutor, or cut the Dragapult EX and add Goudra, that kind of stuff. So, I don't know. I think there's a reason why this deck is the top deck right now, just to talk about Regidrago and the position it has in the meta. It's just able to do everything and anything. The moment you start teching for this, they're like, cool, I'm gonna put in a new Dragon Pokemon that just fixes your... Like, you start running Bouffalant? Okay, cool, I'll run Alolan Exeggutor, or I'll run Haxorus. And now you don't have a way to beat this deck consistently. You know, this is... I mean, we will just see... I will just see this deck at the top for the rest of the format until, you know... Until it rotates. Yeah, exactly. I don't think it's like broken Lugia levels of the generosity of it being the top deck in the format. I think there's enough other stuff to where there's enough balance to where this isn't just gonna be like 40% of the meta or something like that. But we saw it make a huge leap up in play for this tournament. And then we saw it convert insanely well, considering that it was the most played deck day one. Rarely do we ever see the deck that gets played the most day one, cut into day two at a higher percentage. I don't know the last time I saw that in this season. But I think that that gets bolstered a little bit because Regidrago is favored by a lot of high caliber players. That's for sure. And like you said, this is a deck that... Regidrago V-Star as a card kind of snowballs its potential the bigger the card pool gets and the more dragon type Pokemon get released. So the deck, the card has more options available to it as attackers. I mean, you just look at the attackers in this deck, three of them didn't exist eight months ago. And now granted the validity of the Exeggutor is debatable, but the Kyurem and Dragapult in particular are what put this deck on the map. And if they didn't exist, along with the Ogre Pawn, I mean, if any of those three cards weren't in existence, I don't know if this deck would exist. No, if Ogre Pawn didn't exist, this deck wouldn't be a thing. So obviously like Regidrago is a very strong deck. Like I said before, I don't really want to spend a ton of time on these other lists. Like you said, Brent put Brain back his list from LAIC, obviously a very strong list, very strong player. But I also don't think that that is the best list moving forward. I do think something that's a little bit more streamlined with some of these other new power cards that are also consistency cards that don't require you to play a stage one are gonna be the way to go. And we'll probably see that Enterprise in the top. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in our next segment where we talk about Stuttgart. But prior to doing that, I have some questions for you, John. And those are gonna come up in this week's edition of Blaine's Quiz Show, which as I said last week, has quickly become one of my favorite things about the show. And I hope that you share that opinion. It depends week to week, you know, how well I do and how well you do and how well I feel like I've quizzed you. Last week, you did really well. Good, I think you got three for three last week. I think that's like the record. I don't think we've ever had a host get three for three. So, you know, congrats. Hopefully I can challenge you. I think you're up eight to five now after that. That is correct. So, all right, man. So we'll head into this week's Blaine's Quiz Show. As always, you have three multiple choice questions here. You will have one hint available and each correct answer will be worth one point. The one hint will be kind of a generic hint, nothing super specific, but to hopefully help you find the right answer. I know historically, John, you said that you have struggled to kind of identify the right spot to use the hint, but let's see how you do this week. And we'll jump into our first question here. So Meridon EX won Sacramento Regionals this past weekend. But I want to know what deck won Sacramento Regionals last season. Was it Meridon EX again? Was it Lydia V-Star? Was it Lost Box? Or was it Mew V-Max with Genesect V? Oh my goodness. So it would have been pre-rotation. Let's see. I struggled because I didn't watch much of the stream and I definitely, I don't know. If I, I feel like they probably would've talked about this on the stream at some point, at the beginning of the cast. I think I'm just gonna use my hint just to get it out of the way because I feel like I can get this with a hint, but I definitely can't get this without a hint, so. Totally fair, totally fair. So you were right. This was a pre-rotation deck. And the hint that I have for you is that the winner of the event last season was Alexander Flatos. I'm not sure how much that helps you. No. I'm looking at Lugia and Mew, and I'm kind of stuck between those two. They said it's pre-rotation. I wanna lean towards Lugia, but I'm trying to remember if Flatos might've played Mew Genesect. I think I'm gonna go Lugia just because I don't think Mew really ever did that well in North American regionals. So I'm just gonna go Lugia, lock that in. Very nicely done, John. You navigated that well. You were totally right. Mew EX was definitely a European card, or Mew VMAX, I should say. Lugia V-Star took this event down, piloted by, as I said, Alexander Flatos. This was before Moridon was actually released. So unfortunately, it was not able to win a title that it could then defend. Lost Box did win the two events prior to this in North America, but didn't quite get close enough this time. Moving on to our second question. See if you can figure out our theme by now. In the Scarlet and Violet video games, which of these things is not associated with Moridon? Your choices are Sandwiches, Electrodrift, Collision Course, and Area Zero. Oh man. Well, I did play the Scarlet and Violet video games a little bit. I never got to Area Zero, but I do know enough to know that it is a future Pokemon based on Cyclozar. So I'm guessing that it is part of Area Zero in that sense that it originated from Area Zero. I know that it does love Sandwiches. I did see that much in my playthrough of Violet. So I'm kind of stuck again between two choices, Collision Course and Electrodrift. I'm guessing that those are attacks that it learns. I'm sure one of them is the signature move. Moridon being the electric dude, I'm gonna say that Collision Course is not associated with Moridon because Electrodrift sounds cooler and I kind of want it to be part of Moridon's lore. You are totally right. Electrodrift is in fact Moridon's signature move. Collision Course is Coridon's signature move. Cool. Both of them love Sandwiches, of course, and both of them definitely came from Area Zero. Man, all right, I'm feeling good. Feeling good, feeling good. Maybe I made these too easy. Heading into our last question, which of the following Scarlet and Violet era sets does not have a Moridon EX in it? And your choices are Obsidian Flames, Paradox Rift, Temporal Forces, or Paldean Fates. Okay, yeah, this is a little more challenging. I don't like, I think the set review we did for the podcast was the first time I did a real in-depth look at a set in the last few years. So I don't really look at every set. I know that there's a basic Moridon in Paradox Rift, but beyond that, I don't know about Temporal. I'm gonna say, I don't know if Obsidian Flames had a Moridon in it. I'm gonna lock in Obsidian Flames. That's the one that feels the most like there wasn't a Moridon in it. Unfortunately, John, you are incorrect. Obsidian Flames was, of course, our Charizard EX set, but it was also the set where we got a bunch of those Japanese starter deck cards, and that is where that top Moridon EX in our infograph came from. Obviously, there was a Temporal Forces future Moridon EX, and then the one that I was hoping was gonna trip you up was the Paldean Fates reprint with that blue Moridon EX. But nope, Paradox Rift, devoid of Moridons. See, that's so interesting, because, yeah, is it being, I guess this was the second Paradox set, right? Correct. So I guess they focused on Moridon in the first one, and then after that, moved away from that. So I guess I misread, I guess, with some logic behind it, but it just wasn't the right logic. So two for three. Still a solid week. Still a solid week. One point gap. Can't really complain about it. Right in your shadow, waiting for you to trip up. I'll try to make- I will never trip up. No more Swalot questions, and we'll be good to go. Oh, well, I'll have to find a new favorite Pokemon for you to have after we do Blaine's Quiz Show next week. Maybe get some Squvit action, or some, I don't know, Trubbish lore, you know? We'll figure something out. I love Trubbish. I have a fond history with Trubbish, so I would recommend staying away from that one. Yeah. What's your favorite generation? Maybe I'll do one based on... Huh. That's a good question. Like, if you had that Professor playmat with all the different Pokemon on it, what would be the one you chose? I think... It would probably be Gen 5. Oh, I love to hear that. It's got my boy in it, and I have... Have you seen my Professor playmat? I have an extra copy I can sell to you if you ever want to buy it, so. Well, I would like to think, as your co-host, that you would just gift it to me out of the goodness of your heart in this season of giving, and thanks, John. But, you know, if you want to be like that, you corporate American, you know? No. Those Professor playmats are definitely really cool. I think that I have the one from Gen 2 right now. This is the one I mained, for the most part, so, for those of you with a camera. All the extra legendaries are really cool. It's got the best... Gothitelle's in that generation, the Accelgor's in that generation. There's just a lot of really cool Pokemon in Gen 5. I mean, I know that it was kind of initially a sort of like a reboot generation, or was intended to be, and that it was supposed to kind of have its own identity and stand on its own, and I think that it does that really well. But, as we close out Blaine's Quiz Show, and start to move towards closing out the show, I want to talk about what we expect to see heading into Stuttgart this weekend. You know, maybe these European players that played at L.A. IC that didn't come over to Sacramento, had a bit more time to test, to have the advantage of seeing the results from Sacramento and maybe developing some new technology or just adopting strategies from this tournament and seeing if they can't shake up the meta in their own way. So John, do you think that we're going to see kind of more of the same of what we saw this last weekend, or do you expect a lot of new things to come out? I am hopeful that we get a lot of new stuff, but I don't really expect a whole lot. One thing I do expect that we didn't see in Sacramento, I expect Maridon to be like a top three deck moving forward. Um, EU, EU loves Maridon. Um, they loved it back when it wasn't the best deck and format. And I know like, um, it'll get played quite a bit. I feel like moving forward after it got first and second, um, I think it'll, it'll probably it's cause it's one of those decks it's like raging bolt where. You don't, I mean, in theory, I'm sure like the people that made Maridon will be like, it's very skill intensive. It's very, you know, thoughtful. And it is, there's times where there there's a decision tree that you have to think that's maybe not as intuitive. Like, um, but I think the casual or a player that definitely is not the, you know, world traveling grinder, like a Brent Tonneson, um, we'll look at Maridon and see it do well and kind of be confident that they can bring that to the regional and stick cart. Right. Um, yeah, just say that yellow card does a lot of damage. Yeah. I am hopeful that since, you know, EU, uh, we didn't have LAIC. Um, I mean, some of you use some players for me, you did travel down there, but they had the week off and I'm sure like Alessandro Cremasoli has been grinding new technology on control and we'll see somebody bring something with hydrogon, maybe, or with, uh, several edge or something like that. I'm hopeful that we'll get a little bit more new decks on stream. Um, and I think we will, I think we'll probably see one of those, like newer decks crack a top eight or at least like top 16. Um, uh, yeah, I think, uh, I do still predict that Reggie Drago will still be very dominant. It'll probably be the number one deck in this format as well. And this tournament as well. Um, there's just not a lot of, um, kind of, kind of, it's like, it's the best deck in format until something proves that otherwise, um, for the time being. Um, I don't think there's a hard counter that you can put in your deck or a matchup that it hates bad enough, maybe raging bolt, but like we've talked about it, maybe a little bit, uh, raging bolt struggles in a loss box struggles into some of the other stuff that might be more popular now. Um, so, and I think, you know, a good Drago player can hold their own enough against a raging bolt, maybe like when 50% of their raging bolts, and that's enough in this format, um, with raging bolts slipping when losing its top place atop the meta, uh, standings. But, uh, yeah, I think, I don't know. I I'm hopeful that we get new stuff. Uh, I always love watching new stuff. Uh, like watching the European regionals, cause I can wake up a little earlier before my wife gets up and I'll, uh, you know, get up at like five in the morning and watch for a couple hours. And I'm, I'm an early, I'm an early bird. My wife likes to sleep in a little bit. So it's fun to, you know, kind of start the day off watching some Pokemon and then go about your weekend or whatever. Um, right this weekend, I guess I'll be traveling. So it might be a little bit more difficult to do that. Um, with the, you know, we're going out to my sister's, uh, they got a beach house. Um, so we're going to go visit them for the holiday weekend. Beach Thanksgiving. Uh, not Thanksgiving. It'll be right after Thanksgiving. We're staying in town for Thanksgiving itself. And then I have to work Friday, um, and then we'll go out after work. So, but anyway, um, yeah. What are your thoughts on the StuteGuard meta? What do you think that will be? Um, uh, what do you, what are you expecting to see? Uh, I expect that we will see a continued drop-off from Lugia. Uh, it's the kind of rise of Maridon and rise of Lost Zone. I think are going to push that deck down. It'll be off the turn or the day one graphic completely. And I actually think that we're going to see a pretty decent increase in Charizard going into this weekend. Charizard is touted and has been touted as having a solid Maridon matchup for quite a while. And I don't really expect it to be that much different now. I think that if you tech properly for the matchup, you play counter stadiums to kind of get their bench cleared up of some of the support Pokemon that the deck needs to really function and maintain itself as it moves forward. You can just take advantage of the fact that they take two prizes on turn one or two and hit them with an Infernal Rain into, oh gosh, what is this attack called? Um, I'm totally blanking on it, but hit them for 240 and you take a knockout and you just kind of steamroll from there and if they don't have their bench full of support Pokemon, I think that a lot of times Maridon could struggle to hit into that 330 or just over 300 range. 300 is a little bit more achievable for the reasons that I outlined a little bit earlier, but 330 can be pretty difficult for the deck to do. For sure. And, um, I would be hopeful, you know, because Maridon won it, because we saw an increase in Lost Box. I really want to see somebody pick up Flygon. I, it's a pipe dream for me at this point. I don't think that anyone else is as invested in the card as I am, but I think that Klefki is in an absolutely amazing spot right now and the decks that can play Klefki the best are Gardevoir, of course, and Flygon. And that hit and run may be pretty weak, just doing 130 damage, but when you knock out the entire Maridon deck in one hit, I don't really think you care. Yup. Um, Burning Darkness, I believe is the attack name. Yeah, I definitely had it. We got there. I know, it's, uh, it's not a deck I play super often, so I'd have to like rack my brain a little bit too. Yeah. I was thinking Abyssal Flame, but I think that that's actually Saraledge. Okay. Yeah. That's cool. It's a little Ghostfire. That's neat. Yeah. And we get the Darkfire with Charizard. Um, I know you love Flygon. Um, I'm, I'm thinking you're going to have to be the one that pulls a trigger and makes it a known deck at this point. Um, hopefully maybe you can get, uh, some hype out there, like put your list out on Twitter and see if somebody picks it up or something like that. But I don't know, man. Um, yeah, I, I think I agree with you though. I was playing Flygon a little bit online and a little bit of locals. Um, and it's a like lost box. You just feel like you have an auto win a lot of times, like, uh, into Maridon. I'm sure it's similar. Clefki's so strong right now. Um, everything including like, if you look at that infographic back at Sacramento, like five of those six decks or whatever that are listed there are using basic, um, attackers or basic, uh, Pokemon with abilities to, um, fuel their whole setup, fuel the whole, um, draw mechanics with Clefki with, uh, Ogre pawn with, uh, all that stuff going on. So yeah, Clefki is super, super strong. Um, and it just does take the right kind of partner. I think we have seen, uh, Gardevoir pop up here and here and then, but yeah, I think having that hit and run with, um, Flygon, I think the only thing that might be holding that back is, uh, it's a very like one dimensional strategy, the hit and run, um, and it might, it might struggle to close games out or it might struggle to, uh, have some flexibility into different matchups. Or if your opponent like wises up to what you're doing, maybe they're able to like, I don't know, just play around a little bit. Um, and that could be real challenging for you to deal with. Um, like the second attack on Flygon is pretty bad. Um, and you really don't have a lot of other attackers in that deck. Um, so maybe if you can, like, uh, I know that you ran like the Bloodmoon or Saluna to close games out. Um, and there's some other stuff like you can run other, like, I think luminous energy for Mimikyu or for something like that. Um, if you wanted to try like a corner, like a walls strategy, primarily instead of the Flygon, uh, you could go for that, but yeah, it's something that I'm, I'm, I'm glad that you're, uh, you're always tinkering. You're always thinking stuff out. Uh, maybe somebody will play Flygon on stream and, and, uh, you'll be like the, Oh, there it is, you know, kind of got, but you know, and obviously if, if Flygon is not as good, it's obviously not going to be popular. I think five people played it in Sacramento. Um, if, if that's not the way that Klefki's seen play, I could definitely see Gardevoir doing pretty well as well. I think that Gardevoir is extremely strong still. Um, it doesn't really like none of the decks that showed up as new contenders. I mean, maybe Lost Box can give it a hard time from time to time. It depends on whether or not, like you probably have to put Manaphy back in the deck for that matchup. Otherwise the Greninja plays can be really overwhelming for you. Um, being able to do 300 with Pikachu is pretty big into Gardevoir itself, even though it is no one hit KO, it prevents the Gardevoir from running away from you. And it can just kind of snowball from there. But you do have the ability to take out a lot of things with Gardevoir as an attacker that can be difficult for some of these big basic decks to overcome. So I've, I think that I'm kind of staking my claim on stage twos this week. And I think that we're going to see a Gardevoir or a Charizard come out on top at the end of the day. Not something new, maybe Hydreigon, the deck's better than I gave it credit for initially, but I'm still not sure if that's quite been figured out to the point that it's ready to win a regional. Yeah. I mean, we've seen some wacky stuff when some European regionals, I mean, we've seen the one and the straight Dragapult, the straight Dragapult. Um, I mean, Golden Goat made a really deep run, uh, in that last one. Um, what was the, what was the last European? I don't remember. I have to go back. Regidrago. Regidrago won two in a row over there. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I think I, I, I'd have a hard time picking against Regidrago right now. Um, I think we could see like that huge Moran on upsurge and like, yeah, I think Charizard, like you said, is in a good position if that's the case. Um, I can see Lostbox doing really, really well. Um, I think that it matches into, uh, a lot of the other decks that we've talked about, um, really well right now. Um, if Lugia is decreasing in popularity, that was a hard matchup for Lostbox a lot of times. Um, Charizard can be a challenge, but I think with Pikachu, you can kind of get that reach potential finally. Um, and set up Kayo's early game to close out with Pikachu later on. Um, so I don't know. Um, I'm excited to see it. Uh, I'll be watching more. I can. Um, and yeah, you'll hear about us talking about it next week. Uh, what do you, so you said you think stage twos is your, it's their time to shine in this weekend. And I think that they're actually, I think that you're in a, if you're in a big, big basic rushdown format or a big basic rushdown meta for a large percentage of the field, that a beefy stage two has the ability to come in and sweep people off the board. As long as you construct your deck properly. Yeah. I think I could see controlled succeeding really well for that same reason. If, if it's all a stage one, basic meta, um, control really likes that too. Um, because they're like, okay, cool. I'll just run Noivern or I'll run, you know, Mimikyu or something like that. Um, you know, we've seen Dusknoir fall off a lot. Um, so maybe a deck that is, that was vulnerable to Dusknoir. Um, now like a, a big giant wall, like a Blissey or something like that, just kind of weirdly enough comes out of nowhere, um, Raging Bolt is still too popular, I'd say for that to really be too successful, but yeah, I think if Dusknoir doesn't have like a, Charizard already has a bad matchup against control. I could see that doing really well. Control is probably a good pick for this weekend in my mind. Awesome. Well, I think that, you know, that about sums up all the thoughts that we have heading into this weekend. Um, so we of course want to say to all of our American friends and listeners, we hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'll still be releasing the show on Thursday, obviously. So if you're listening to the end of this episode, you're probably already enjoying your Thanksgiving or have enjoyed it previously, so I hope it was great. Uh, and for everyone that is participating in Stukart, wish you the best of luck. Please play Flygon. Um, and if you want to hear more for John and I, we are both on social media. Um, John's primarily on Blue Sky now, I believe still has a Twitter page. Not sure how often he checks it, but is at John Paul Orgel. And I am at underscore Aaron underscore Cardy. And we will see you on the next edition of the Battle Frontier. Peace. Happy Thanksgiving.