From the Orchard to the Finals... Talking Everything Hydrapple ex with Ben Dobberstein!

Generals. Welcome back to another episode of the Shift Gear podcast. And in very Shift Gear fashion, we brought on a guy who's wearing a sports jersey. So shout out to Ben. He also has the OG shift gear Beckett hat. The real ones will remember the OG Beckett hat. And, like, funnily enough, I actually don't even know where mine is. So you're. You're the proud owner of one of. One of. One of a kind relic right now. So, I mean, this thing has carried me through some great vibes. So, Yu-Gi-Oh Ben was one of, like, our OG supporters, dude. Like, he bought one of the original Beckett hats. This is the guy. Just. I'm just a Beckett Beckett kind of guy. So when you guys Tribute a Beckett hat, I was like, I have to, like, Yu-Gi-Oh clean, like, you know, it's not flashy. And. And, Yu-Gi-Oh got to support the program. It gets the job done. That's what the shift gear Beckett hat does, you know, gives you aura when you. Yu-Gi-Oh it's like. It's very essential, I would say. It's like the H and M version of a cool Beckett hat. It's just, like, it's not flashy. It's calm, gets the job done, keeps the sun out of your Yu-Gi-Oh And we had. We had a bunch of complaints that when we first Tribute him, that the extra large wasn't big enough. So I'm glad it at least fits your head, because that wasn't true. I mean, I have a pretty big head, and honestly, I. I actually think it's very, very comfortable. So I don't know. I don't know what these people talking about. We got to bring those things back, dude. We're losing out. But, Yu-Gi-Oh it's obviously. It obviously has to be a very momentous occasion for us to invite a Broncos fan onto the podcast. So welcome to the Podcaster. Huge congratulations, first of all, on your run. As soon as it was happening, I texted Kieran even before the finals. I was like, look, bro, we, like, I got a guy for us this week. Like, this is got to be our guy. So we were. We were very happy for you. We're cheering you on. We'll obviously get into all the. All of your happenings throughout the tournament. I think, like, at the end of the day, you have one of the greatest stories ever as to how that finals went. Even though it didn't go your way, it is a fantastic story. Somebody has to sit on the wrong side of history. So, yes, at least you're part of history. That's. That's where Something I'd rather be a part of his. Well Yu-Gi-Oh you could probably market that in some way and, and make the 2 1/2 k back. Like you could probably do that very easily and you know, make some money off it. But I guess first of all we'll give you a platform to kind of introduce yourself, give us your, a background of you and obviously we, we know you. We've had a, we've had a couple drinks together but the audience doesn't know you. So give us, give us the feel. My name's Ben from the Chicago suburbs. Been playing Pokemon. Been playing since about 2012. First event that I ever went to was like a next Destiny's pre release. So been around the block playing this game, you know, always been chasing a big finish and you know, it was pretty, pretty incredible to get there this weekend. You know, shout out to my dad who's really the one who has enabled this passion for me. He plays the game himself and he's a bit of a grinder so you know, been playing the game for a long time and you know, it's pretty, pretty incredible feeling after this weekend. That's awesome. Yu-Gi-Oh it's, it's a family affair for you I guess and that helps you kind of, kind of continue on. Sometimes you need some friends, some close friends or some family to kind of push you on when formats suck like maybe this one does. Some would argue. Yu-Gi-Oh that is the format may be. My dad's always online grinding whatever. You know, pre rotation it was Noctowl, raging Bolt and now he's been playing, he's been playing Hydrop. He probably has more games, more games on live than I do with the deck. So I mean credit to him. Did he play this weekend as well? No, he, he refuses to play in person. He is a terrible loser. So if it were, if it were him sitting in the seat in finals, it would have been ugly actually. Credit to him. He, he came out to Worlds with, with, with myself and Ryan Prusak and he actually got in there in some side events, went 30 on one of those standard pot standard big like Swiss three rounders and he was feeling great about himself with that. So. All right, it's a little prelude. Maybe he'll, maybe we'll see him one time once he gets the, the emotions under control. I think it'd be fine. I think you need to get a little salty. Back when like they had the, the limit or the players Cups. He qualified for the players Cups on PPCGO and I did not so he's got the pedigree. You know, we actually have several ongoing like parent deals for shift gear appearances. We can extend it to Mr. Dauberstein. If Mr. Dauberstein comes and gets a day two, he is well invited to come on the shift gear podcast. We're still waiting on our first parent, actually. Well, I'm gonna tell him that. I mean, maybe this will get him out. I mean he, he could day two. Like, I have, I have absolutely no doubts about it. So Yu-Gi-Oh he probably has no idea who we are. But you know what, it's worth shot. Yu-Gi-Oh If he grinds live like crazy and like he's going 300 side event pots at Worlds, I think he could do it. He could do it. He could do it. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh no, that'd be cool. And you'll actually. I didn't even see you the whole weekend, bro. How'd you do? I did my worst tournament ever at Baltimore, so I was close too. I heard, I heard you were like commentating or something at one point. What happened? So I went 03 drop, which I've never done in my 15 years of playing Pokemon. Literally. Like, I'm not just saying this, like the most unplayable hands I've ever drawn in my life. Like I'm pretty. I'm pretty good at saying when I messed up. But like, bro, it was legit. Like just unplayable round. So I wasn't paying attention who you play. I just played straight dragapult. Like literally just like Hammer Dragon ball. I lost round one to Dhelamize Alakazam. So that wasn't a good start because I. I missed both games. I missed getting dracloaks on turn two and I lost the mirror match. Just the classic. I got item locked and Goldin do anything. And then I lost to a zoric where the third game I started with bedew and no supporter or basic and it was very sad. In the first game I. In the first game I didn't get dracloaks the entire game actually. Like I got lilies on my first turn. Going second, I'm like oh, this is sick. And then I just didn't draw another supporter Dracloak. So Yu-Gi-Oh it was difficult tournament for me. But the silver lining was Yu-Gi-Oh I got invited onto the the stream to do like the post game analyst desk. I don't know if you guys have watched Pablo segment, but like he'll pick out plays and then he'll do it. So it was really cool. Like I got to be me and Pablo Kind of sat together. There's like an iPad back there and like, while the game's going on, we, like, pick the clips that we want. And then Pablo kind of drew with like the. On the thing on the clips for me while I was talking over them. So I got to watch Sharpedo against Lawpunny, but there's actually some pretty interesting plays. So Yu-Gi-Oh you guys can go watch that, give me feedback. But it was really cool to be on the stream. Like, it's. I'd love to one day. Like, maybe even like commentator. I mean, like, just do more like, stuff on the broadcast. I always love doing it, so, Yu-Gi-Oh definitely silver lining for me. It was fun just being at a regional, so. Because I'm not playing another one for like another month and a half. So. Yu-Gi-Oh so even though bad, that's very cool. Yu-Gi-Oh you're going, oh, and three. That seems like the best outcome. Like, Yu-Gi-Oh like, that's. That's pretty dope. Yu-Gi-Oh exactly. So I'll try to go on three if that was the case. That's. That's. Yu-Gi-Oh that's awesome, dude. Yu-Gi-Oh I guess. Yu-Gi-Oh My. I had a very similar fate. We played. Played the same deck, which is not something we do often, but like, that deck just sometimes just doesn't really operate. It happens. I played the exact same list. Basically. I played the World's Open where I did well. I just round. I cut my Chiu round. When I hit cross hall, I was like, okay, cool, sick. Round two, I lost Mir. Similar to you, I beat a Zoro. Then I hit Zenith garchomp and hide and sneak. So my day was over relatively quickly and I got out just in time to go watch the Baltimore Orioles. So that was cool. Got to go to Camden Yards iconic ballpark. It was a riveting game. I think I would have rather watched grass die. They lost one nothing. I went the next night and they lost three nothing. He got shut up. Back to back days and then lit up the Jays the following day. So, you know, as it goes. But Yu-Gi-Oh no, I mean, Baltimore is always a very interesting adventure. I didn't hear of any interesting things happening this time around, which is probably a good thing, but at least our boy Ben had an interesting weekend, unlike us, I'll tell you after, and you'll have some interesting things. Oh, boy, that can't be good. So, okay, let's start. Maybe get into the. The conversation before we get ourselves canceled. So be. I wanted to start. I was trying to think of, like, things I wanted to ask you that I maybe haven't asked you before. So one of the few things that I guess we had never talked about is your actual Hydrapple deck. So I wanted to know, you've been on this deck for a while. You have your list on the screen here. What kind of pushed you to play Hydrapple in the first place? What's the thought process? Maybe what was your, your list diagnosis? We have it up on the screen there. Maybe just take us through all of that. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean I enjoy and if you look at my limits, I enjoy like a nice big beat stick deck. You know, we got Gold, we got Jolted Goldango, we got Lugia, we got Miraidon, you know, Roaring Moon. I love a good beat stick and, and Hydropo just falls right in line with that. You know, I like asking the question of my opponent, you know, do you have an answer to this? And sometimes they do and it's a bad news. But after rotation, you know, I was playing dango before that felt comfortable and rotation kind of made me uncomfortable and I Goldin figure anything out. And I ended up taking, taking Hydrapple to a league cup, nice little 10 person league cup and managed to one-of-one the cup. I beat an Ethan Styflosion that day. I beat MO in the finals. Friend of the friend of the pod, of course. All right, sorry, top four. I be Mo and it was a little, he was a little salty. He thought. I thought I kind of sacked him. But I beat a couple of good Dragapult players that day. So I was like, well if this deck can beat Dragapult then you know, beat some decent dragonfl players. And you know, I'm having fun playing it like let's just rock it and see what happens. And you know, going into Indy, I needed to like a, probably like a top 256 or better to lock up the invite. So, you know, I felt comfortable and had a nice little result where I went and lost the top 16 winning in. But I had, I had accomplished what I set out to do. So going into naic I just said let's run it back and just see what the vibes are like. And the vibes were great. And that's just kind of been the running theme since. So now it's just a comfort pick for me. I'm not some pro dedicating, you know, dozens of hours a week to this game. So just play what I'm comfortable with and as long as I can feel like I can beat the best deck in the room a good amount of the time. And if I feel comfortable beating everything else, that's kind of where my philosophy is at with the deck. So Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I think that makes sense. I mean, you know a huge. Proponents of like honestly playing what you know are like one tricking if you're really good at deck. So. So it seems like you kind of found that in Hydropol. I mean like you took it to like top 64 or 32 second. Like that's obviously a great three run stretch. Did you play this at Worlds as well? I did, Yu-Gi-Oh I one-of-one five three at Worlds in round three. I made just like an egregious misplay in game three against a slop where I was just. My opponent went in for turn two, Kangaskhan with three energy. And all you need to KO that is a Meowth or Meganium with three with three energy on an ogre pawn. And I was having one of those turns where it's like everything's going perfect. Everything's going perfect. And then I just attached an Energy to Meowth where I wasn't supposed to and was an Energy shorter taking the knockout and just lost the game that way was a little silly. So lost that and then had a couple of tough beats in rounds five and six there against just some. Some less. Less favorable matchups and which kind of took me out. But you know, five, three worlds. It's not a. Not a horrible placement or nothing to be. Yu-Gi-Oh Zebra respectable. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh for sure. Okay, so then I was, I was kind of like, while you were talking, like taking a look at some of the lists you've played at the past few events. So it seems like you've. Your list has been pretty similar event to event. So the biggest thing like maybe we'll start here is that the difference I see between your list and some other Hydropolis I see is like you don't play the Noctowl, which I've seen a lot of people play. So can you maybe give me your thoughts on. I guess I'll call the straight Hydrapple. So what makes you want to play straight Hydrapple over adding like noctowls? Yu-Gi-Oh I mean I was testing out the Noctouble a little bit and to me it's more of how the Noctowl warps kind of the sum of the deck building decisions you have to make. So I think when you're playing Noctowl, you like, typically these lists are like cutting an ultra ball for like an additional poke pad and you know, then you have, you know, some of these lists playing Noctowl or you know, shooting in, shooting in like red card, which is just something I'm not a huge fan of. But. And they were also going down to one Meowth, which I've had so many people in my DMs asking me like, oh, or like comments like why do you play two Meowth? Like it's such a liability to start Meowth. And it's like, I mean this deck you, you know, and what are the odds of opening a term one the league without a Meowth? Like what, like 40 some percent. So 60 of the games you're going to be wanting to, you know, roughly, you know, probably roughly like 55 of games you're going to be ultra balling for Meowth or Meow thing for Lily right away to play the game. And that's something that's just way too important. You know, you don't mind benching that liability and then you want to have access to it later in the game. So that's kind of why I favor the, the meows over the over the Noctowl. And I, I do think the noctowl is also while it's a nice consistency boost inter in terms of helping you piece the other combos, that extra like low HP1 prizer on your board can be a big liability into Dragapult, you know, allowing them to like ko your Meganium while setting up damage on your Noctowl to kind of help their Prizm map. And a big strength that gets Dragapult is pushing that 330 hp guy and, and saying hey, like you have a tough time dealing with this. But it being that liability into pult is another one of those reasons that I'm not as big of a fan of it. That makes sense. I mean, whenever I played the deck with Noctowl, I guess the big thing is it lets you get the unfair stamp combos. But I guess is that why you played Cipher? To compensate just so if you do want to go for like one of those unfair stamp turns, that's why it's there. Yu-Gi-Oh cipher. Cipher helps you. Helps you combo into that unfair stamp turn for sure. And then, you know, even if aside from that unfair stamp turn cipher just has miscellaneous use cases with double teal dance. And some of my favorite plays even are, you know, it's maybe not as ideal of a hand, but you're just ciphering to make sure you're comboing the right two cards you need for Bug catching set. Kind of like a, like a poor man's like you know, Sonia Roseanne's a backup. Like you know it, it, it has function in the deck and, and still lets you piece together that stamp turn in those situations when you really need it. Yu-Gi-Oh I guess the other supporter I see a lot of times in Hydrapal I don't see here is Dawn. So is dawn just too slow? Like you feel like you don't need it. Like Celebi just gets the job done. What are your thoughts on dawn the deck? So Dawn, I, I think dawn actually has a lot of value still. I actually played two dawn and Indy. No Briar. I played and I've played one dawn at Naic in Worlds and I think dawn is really good. Gives you a little extra consistency into itchy pollen. Going into Baltimore specifically, I was testing with some, some friends, Matt Bana Elias photo and they just wanted a little extra, you know, just soft answer into something like an Alakazam as well as just a little, just bit of general disruption. And we, we do think that dawn was kind of that flexible cut to where the dawn can have some really high value power spike turns. But there, there are more, more times than that where you just draw the Dawn. It's just kind of a dead card. So that judge just offered a little bit of different flexibility in that instance. Yu-Gi-Oh that makes a lot of sense to me. Yu-Gi-Oh I guess also the double Meowth. I think the briar does get a lot more value. I think that's a card. Do you think a lot of people forget about like do you think people play against you and like you just like catch them by surprise? I put. So like the biggest reason that I have Briar in the deck at least going into Worlds because Zora work was just so Hyper is you'd look at this deck on paper and you'd think you're like 1000 into Zoroark but a good competence or work player is going to actually make the matchup pretty close. And you know they're so consistent if they do get the first two like you can push your hydrapple, you can push your bulu but like they're just always going to draw their boss or their you know, mochi mochi, you know, black belt combo and you know you can as the hydraffle that consistently take that first Prizm So having that Briar just really made that matchup feel Zebra safe. And then I also think the, you know, the Briar has application in single Prizm matchups where if you can catch an Alakazam or a festival lead missing a turn or two, then that briar can help you kind of really seal that game. And then lastly, I would say like the slot box matchup. If they take the first two but you're able to respond and KO their king before they can bump it, then it opens up that briar to one-of-one the game. That's really good too because you have the double meowth. You have a lot of synergy there. You can kind of pick it out whenever you need to. The one question I had, and I think a lot of people will probably think the same and if this impedes on your guide or the contents of your guide, feel free to just not share. But. So I was wondering about your Dragon Ball matchup. Like could you kind of like take us through what that looks like? Like you don't need to go Zebra in depth, but just like a rough idea of like. I know a lot of people were high on this deck at first and then Dragapult started playing Moltres, they started playing Chi. You. There's a Blaziken variant and like I think some people kind of kick this deck to the curb a little bit. Could you explain to us what your thought process is like going into that matchup and kind of how you feel? Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, so my thought process going into a Dragon Pull matchup and I mean, I guess right now just kind of focusing on like drag pull hammer specifically. Right. I think that's kind of the prevailing archetype is I feel like the deck at face value, I guess a good, a highly skilled Dragon pull hammers player. I think you're taking like a 40, 60. I really do. But I felt comfortable beating some more average Dragapult hammer players and I still felt comfortable against good players, you know, still high rolling a couple, couple games in a row. And you can in that matchup it really comes down to how quickly you're able to kind of get into that first early high drapple. You want to be able to stick that body in the active and make them have the answer. Because you are so efficient at knocking out a dragapult. If you do, you know, get that Hydrapol and Meganium going, the pitfalls you can kind of run into just, you know, as always against Dragapult is if you get just a little bit crumbed by their early itchy pollen lock and you give them some time to, you know, just get the recon going, get that big hand, you know, they're going to combo off on you with a stamp into boss. You know, turn like that. But really just solidifying your board and, you know, sometimes knowing when to go in and when you have to kind of sit back and make sure you're not getting stamped into oblivion. But I would say that, you know, if you look at the matchup data, it's not pretty still. But some of the games, you know, and then you also have to remember that sometimes a bragga pool player is just gonna break. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I think I will say my favorite story from the weekend or one of them was that Mole Trace card in the dragon pull deck can kind of be a trap. And I think it was round five, game three. My opponent, I open up a pretty dead hand and start deal mask. And my opponent, I know he has moltres in the deck. My. I have a stamp and no supporter. And my opponent opens drippy pokey pads for Mole Trace. Crispins retreats and just takes the knockout. I stamp them to two and knock out the Mole Trace. And that. I mean, that was the game right there. So it can be a Tribute. You got to be careful. Yu-Gi-Oh for sure. I mean, look at the data here though. Like, the Dragonfall matchup seems pretty close. This is obviously a smaller sample size. Actually, most of the matchups, according to data are pretty, pretty tight. Which would you say is the hardest dragapult to beat? Is it Dusknoir or is it Blaziken? Which one's harder to face? I actually think it's Dusknoir. Yu-Gi-Oh I think so too because, you know, they're. They're popping dust. Nor on your Meganium. Like you really have a hard time benching Meowth against Dusk. Nor because they can just so easily abuse that. And the Blaziken deck, you know, they have the candies and those can be really scary as you. You saw, if you watch my. My top cut winning in aic, I got crumbed by that. But otherwise you can actually trade pretty favorably. They have less disruption. You know, they're typically only playing the one badoo. They don't have any hammers, so. And sometimes they're even not playing, you know, stamp if they're following, you know, Jackson and playing secret box. So you can have more reliably get your board set up and you can even reliably into that matchup. I'd say the Briar can even come into play more often than. More often than in other dragapult matchups. Because sometimes the Blaziken Players just saying, hey, I'm just gonna knock out your Hydra apple with Blaziken and kind of kind of take a 2 2, 2 Prizm map and you can 1, 2, 3 them reasonably because you only need a 4 energy over pond to KO ablaze again. Yu-Gi-Oh that makes sense to me. My experience has been like, the Dusknoir version, like, is actually like really favored because like you said, you just pop on the Meganium and then you unfair stamp and it's like, all right, good luck making another one. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh But Yu-Gi-Oh the blazing I think makes sense because like you said, like, like they can knock you out. But it is quite a lot of investment to make Blazikens. If they Prizm a chicken piece also, which is like somewhat reasonable, it's gonna happen like half the time, more or less. Yu-Gi-Oh that makes sense to me too. Like that you can also just briar there because if they're gonna try and keep the pace with you, they have to kind of go on like a 2:2 map themselves. So, no, it makes a lot of sense to me. So then, like, I guess looking at your list, like, what were some of the 61st, 62nd cards if you had to play this tournament again or maybe going forward, I guess, because now we have the new set. I don't know if it changes much, but. Yu-Gi-Oh What cards were you considering? Is there anything you would change about this deck going forward? Well, notably at Worlds, I played Tool Scrapper. And if you go back and watch the finals match, I got, I got my Elias in my. In my messages saying, man, if we had the Tool Scrapper in the deck, you decipher Scrapper to the top and one-of-one the game right there. So that was definitely an option. What else do we have? Like, I talked about the dawn for sure, of course, and there's not really a whole ton of, you know, you can argue about the, the noctowl, the one one, but really going forward, I mean, obviously I'm a little bit, you know, recency bias, but I, I wouldn't change anything in the list at the moment. I would just keep rocking. Yu-Gi-Oh I think going into, you know, 30th doesn't add much to the game, but it just adds mu ex, which I think these in general, you feel pretty good against slop and that kind of deck with this. And I think kind of those mui x decks on paper, at least I'm looking at them and I'm not really, really too scared of them. That bulu. I didn't play the Bulu at Worlds, he's kind of the mascot. So I think that might have been why I missed day two. But I think that card just gets more value going forward too. So I would. I would keep rolling with the list. If you're just picking it up, I would. I would stick with this. You can definitely think about Strapper. I think red card is a. Is a card that people might see and. And I think it's notably lacking, but I just think that red cards kind of just a blank card against Dragapult. And you know, I already have Briar in there, so I've already got, you know, I already have Bulu, so those are kind of blank cards against Dragapult too, so I don't want to play too many of those. So that was kind of a sacrificial cut as well. Yu-Gi-Oh With the judge. That makes sense. You said Boo, you think gets more value going forward, so why do you think Boo gets more value going forward? Just because it knocks out Mew or is there, like, other thing? No, I think just generally if. And you know, I'm not some kind of meta wizard. I. I do think Mew seems really strong though. So if these kind of Mew pile, like, you know, box decks pick up and play, I think that high drapple is. Or Blue Ice just a car that trades Zebra favorably into something like that. Yu-Gi-Oh that makes a lot. It's obviously. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Go ahead. You're good. I was just making a comment. You're good. Okay. I was gonna say, like, it obviously, like, it's Zebra different too, when you have a deep run. Like, everything just feels so perfect. Right. And because you played so many, so much Pokemon, you can probably go back and recount a situation where all of these cards were useful in some way, shape or form. Right. So I've noticed that too. Like, anytime you have a deep run, you just love the 60 deck, the 60 cards that you use. And it's. There's rarely an outlier to that. The. The one question I did have as well is like, so. So you are favorable into like the kind of the slot box variants. It feels good. It feels like that's going to be picking up some steam too. It looks like there might be some hate coming in with a little bit of stunfisk, retreat lock stuff going on with the Mew. Obviously there's no direct answer to that in this list right now. Is that something maybe you consider long term? Because I do feel like that might be a way that they can kind of swing that matchup. But I guess my question overall is. I guess Kieran touched on it as well. It's like 30th doesn't change a whole lot, but it might change what decks are kind of partition towards the top. Do you still feel comfortable with this deck? Do you think this is a viable deck going forward for people going to Louisville? I do. I mean, I think if you're considering it, absolutely. I think general meta trends or, you know, general strength of these slop decks that are picking up a mew. A mew inclusion, I think their dragapult matchup gets even better. And that's not to say that dragapult, you know, still one-of-one be the best I can format, but I do think the. Especially after Dylan's one-of-one Right. I do think more people are going to be picking up some slop, and I feel comfortable with that. And as far as the rest of the meta, I mean, I don't think, you know, that much changes to where from between this event and now. And, you know, we'll see what happens in Frankfurt this weekend. But going into Frankfurt, at least this weekend, I would say I would absolutely tell people to feel comfortable sending this deck if they have. If they feel comfortable playing it. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that makes sense. So what would be some matchups you don't want to hit? Like, what would you say are the hardest matchups for this deck? Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, Yu-Gi-Oh definitely that Pultener that we were talking about. Alakazam is certainly one of those matchups that was on our radar as being difficult. You know, if they miss a turn or two, you can beat them. But if an Alakazam draws well, I mean, they're gonna beat you. It just happens. And then I would say that Festival Lead is a matchup that's a bit trickier. Before they had Goldin I would say it was a little bit more manageable, but now it's just makes it tough. But Festival Leads, also one of those decks that is susceptible sometimes to just an early judge or an early, you know, to that stamp, and you can. You can fake it sometimes in that matchup, you can do the wave right back at them too. You can, you can, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, if they miss like a growing grass or if they don't get their Sea King, you can definitely abuse that. So with the Briar, that matchup's playable, but still not. Not one that I love to see. I think, you know, that's kind of where my list of matchups that really scare me ends. And I think that's kind of the strength of this deck, at least in my eyes, is it feels very good into kind of the rest of, you know, the rest of the field. Next to Dragapult, like I feel comfortable piloting the deck against, you know, most of the metagame. Yu-Gi-Oh I think one of the things that you showed really well this weekend, we were watching your stream on our drive home after the, after the Ravens game. It was a long drive, so thank you for helping us pass that. I noticed like some plays that you made that were quite frankly, excellent, like you showed a lot of ways that you can play this deck. And I think a lot of top players were complaining earlier when this deck was popular that there wasn't a whole lot of playability in it, that there was some things that felt very linear, you're very limited by your draws, etc. Etc. I think one of the things you taught the world this weekend is that, you know, there are levels to this like you can definitely do well with it. And so what my question would be for this one. So Louisville's in two weeks or under two weeks or wherever we're at now, but it's close. How much time do you think the average person needs to put into this deck? Do you think the ceiling, it's one of those decks where like the, the ceiling is very high, but the basement is also very highly. If you can play it at a decent level, you can do well. I. Or do you think that you need to be as tested as you are to go on a long run if you're being completely transparent? I mean, if I'm being completely transparent, I think that it is. This is kind of one of those decks that is kind of a high rollers dream where someone can pick it up with no games and then start, you know, ripping their bug catching sets and ripping all the good cards off the lily. But I think with, you know, a week or two of testing, if you play the. If you, you know, have adequate sequencing skills, I think it's a deck that you can pick up really quick. So if you're comfortable sequencing already and not even on an incredibly high level, but you know, just considering, you know, I'm about to teal dance. I have a bug catching set and turn, you know, in my hand. What am I trying to draw this turn? Am I trying to draw a stadium or a supporter? Awesome. Let me play this bug catching set first. Am I, you know, wanting to just see more Pokemon and energy? Great. I'll play, you know, I'll teal Dance first. You know, asking yourself questions like this, that sequencing does go a long way. But, you know, there's definitely some. Some little, you know, more minute details to pick up on. You know, I. I know there were a couple, you know, the game on stream against one-of-one where I just sacked off my teal mask because I was looking at my hand like, well, this stamps the only way to draw cards. Knowing when it's okay or when you have to take risks like that. Like, with playing any deck is important. And. Yu-Gi-Oh So I think if you give yourself a week or two to. To prep and get some games in, if you really want to, I think you can, you know, go out there and feel comfortable piloting the deck as long as you have those basic sequencing skills down and that time halves if you buy your guide. Right. So that works for sure. No doubt. Fantastic. Everyone go buy his guide whenever it's out. We don't know when that's going to be. Actually. Do you have a. Do you have an eta? I'm aiming to get something out by Friday, hopefully at least talking about, you know, kind of the deck construction itself, the Dragon Pulp matchup. And then I plan on getting it updated from there kind of as I go, but I at least want to get that out for. For folks who are hoping to play in Frankfurt and definitely going into. To Louisville. So we will have that link down Blue Ice soon as it comes out. If you're here on Friday or later, check the link. Hopefully it's there. If not, you can blame Ben because he was. You can definitely blame me if it's not. So watching the packers on Thursday Night Football. Too busy. I get it. I get it. I've been there. Actually, I had a question. Who's on your jersey? As long as I don't have to watch Cooper Rush. Hey, fair enough. Is that a certain Jersey Bonito? Oh, my God. All right, we're getting deep cuts here. I like it. You're a true fan. I like that. I like that. You're from Chicago, right? You're a Broncos fan. How'd that happen? My dad was born in Wyoming, spent part of his childhood in Denver and on the west coast, so. Makes sense. My grandmother was a big Broncos fan, so I had no choice. That's acceptable. Cool. Okay. Like, next time we can move. Next up, we can move on to your matchups. I was looking through, like, it seemed like pretty standard. You actually didn't hit any alakazams. Your two losses in Swiss were actually a dragonfold, I guess. Liam, obviously a Great player, Alex. Also a good player. Were those matches close? Were any of the wins like you really had to grind for? Or did it feel kind of like smooth sailing for the most part to top cut, you know, it was pretty smooth sailing, I would say. My day actually started off with an Absolute bang at around one against this Lucario where I got in there going second with the Applin attack for 10 on Triolu. He follows up with Hariyama Gus Ko My Ogre Pond. And from a lone applin board, I assembled the 5 energy Meganium Wombo combo. Do I do 330 to the Mega Lucario? That had 10 on it already from the tumbling attack. So that was pretty epic. But after that round one, pretty smooth sailing for the first four rounds. I would say did a steal a set against John. I would say there in round three where he played into my cruel arrow stamp play exactly how I wanted. And then bricked brickt hard in game two. Like I was saying, festival leads one of those trickier matchups, but kind of stole one there. After. Yu-Gi-Oh So round four, that was when my opponent chose to moltres KO on turn one. And we hit him with the stamp. Something going at around five. I hit Liam. We were talking in our hotel room the night before about how Liam was not playing dragapults. And I was like, no, I. I was. I chose not to believe that until he flipped over. Dreepy. That's how you know dragapult is like so much better than all the other decks playing dragonfl were all doomed. Game one was just kind of a classic dragon pull. Itchy pollen, you know, brick fest and game two. I actually threw incredibly hard in multiple facets. He went in and I had the ability to go on myself. And if I pop off with a big turn, I could knock out the dragapult. But I bench fez. And moments after I bench fez, I realize I need the third ogre pawn in play to get the fifth energy from the board that I was coming out of. And I would have hit that. I would have hit that if I didn't have the fez in play. So that was already rough. And so I punches dragapult and he gusts up fez and hits it for 200. And from there, I already had an energy on the fez. First mistake is I didn't even bother right Using ripening charge to heal 30 to take it out of monkey range. Like, that was horrible. And then I get way too cute and I choose to snipe one of his drag cloaks on the bench and leave the 270 damage in play. So I just got punished by that. That was bad. That'll happen. It's Liam's aura, dude. It just is. What? Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I'm like, you know, Liam's playing. You know, he's playing dragapult. He's been playing Zorwark for a year. I'm playing high grapple. Like, what is this? But then Tom rewarded me the next two rounds, said, Yu-Gi-Oh Liam's on. On pull that my. Might be like, here's two. Zora works back to back. I had a buddy say I used to think winning a tournament or doing well at a tournament was so easy. You just buy Liam's discord and you run with it. And then Liam switched to the dark side. So now I don't know how his discord sales are doing. I'm sure they're not lacking, but. Yu-Gi-Oh it is. It was very shocking for all of us to see. To see Liam on Dragonfall, and that's how, you know. But hey, look at the finals, all of a sudden, you know what. What do you know, Liam? True. Yu-Gi-Oh You're changing the world. One step at a time, my friend. Absolutely. But no round six and seven. You know, a couple of zor works. It was three briar games in a row. And then unfortunately, Nathan Brick in game two. Credit to him, though. Great finish for his. Yu-Gi-Oh First Masters. Masters regional here. So I'm sure we'll be seeing him back on the big stage. So we got rid of Sack Wong there in round eight. We thank you, all of us. We thank you very much for. Oh, well, Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, so you said Sack Wong. That's what you guys. Guys call Jack. Yu-Gi-Oh it's his name. His name is Saquon. Game one, he goes second. He's playing like the. Like the lilies slop deck. Yu-Gi-Oh And he draws fraternity. He's like, Yu-Gi-Oh And he ends up going, teal dance bench. GU Prizm E switch, Area 0. Knock out my teal mask. Classic Sack Wong dude. It's just what he does. I mean, his deck has no good answer to a high grapple. Like. Yu-Gi-Oh So I was able to stabilize and one-of-one that game. He got game two with. With some extra. You know, he just got aggressive, got that early chi you and was able to steal game two. But I got there in game three. Just an Absolute pop off on turn two. Just slamming all my cards down on the table and saying, hey, you're in trouble, buddy. You're in trouble, buddy. We dog on him. It takes a good player to get in those spots to sack though. So I've no for sure he was a great player. Pulsar to play against. Play against. Apparently. I didn't know this but apparently Sack Wong is known well. Well in the States too for being Sack Wong. Karen, I didn't know this. Austin was telling me all of his stream guys know Sak Wong. So shout out Sak Wong Man Bros International. Shout out to Jack. I mean kudos to you. He I was at an invitational and his only way to one-of-one was to like randomly like just discard a cure him off the top of his deck and he just yolo slow kings hit the Kirin and or it's the kirum and I just like got up and I was like I almost just expected this to happen. Like he just has a certain aura about him that just like channels the right energy. Like if he got a fortune cookie it would tell him he's going to one-of-one the lottery. Need to one-of-one the lottery the next day. So shout out to Sack for real. I can't believe he didn't sack you though. That's. That's news. I mean well, he. He kind of did but. Yu-Gi-Oh exactly. I hear you. Nice. But round nine against Anderson. I actually played against him at my NAIC run and it was two very uncompetitive games in my favor. Was a little bit more of the same in this one. He was able to steal game two off me. Just one of. One of the games that I just truly bricked but just another, you know, you can see no, no raging Bolt which is you know, one of the cards that can make this matchup a little bit more interesting. And you see the Tauros there and you know, I bet he wishes his Tauros could do 180 to an evolution Pokemon. Not just stage one, but Yu-Gi-Oh we got. You got another free dark deck I guess right after that. Well, I mean credit to Adam. So this was going into round 10. Woke up cubed the night before. You know, felt great going into day two. I saw, I hit Adam. I got down paired into Adam actually which was kind of absurd. Adam actually made it really close. He stole game two off me with the lopunny that he plays. And in game three it's one of those sequences where I was playing all my cards like just needed to hit a couple energy and you know, flip the script into bug catching set. First bug two bug catching sets. First bug catching set with second bug catching set. Hits what I need. So came down to actually kind of the Wire in game three there. So credit to Adam. What should have been. But, you know, I felt like should have been a completely free matchup was actually pretty close on the back of his lopunny. Yu-Gi-Oh I guess the lopunny is interesting. I mean, you can still one shot it, I guess fairly easily, but it actually just requires some work where sharpedo is literally just like, right. Two energy. It requires you to, like. It requires, you know, you to have some cards. Yu-Gi-Oh As opposed to a sharpedo which requires you to have two energy on an ogre pawn and a beginning of play. Like, Yu-Gi-Oh the. The stream game that I like was on the desk. It was actually Adam playing the sharpio deck, so I got to see it in action. So, Yu-Gi-Oh it's a cool deck. I think sharpio is really cool. Fits in there in terms of, like, all the mobility and like switching you have. So, Yu-Gi-Oh Adam's a great player and he's a fellow marion head, so a lot of respect for Adam there. Nice. And okay, after that, you had your first loss or your second loss. Sorry. So another pull. The pull just got you. Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, I. Well, this. This was actually my worst. My worst game of the weekend. Game one, I missed a completely guaranteed one-of-one with a briar line, no less, which almost never comes up with the pole matchup. But I ended up being an energy short of knocking out a pull. So I ended up having to punch into one where he retreated and I had to just punch into another one. He went down to two, and I had three left and I had no way to reset up a meganium. And I'm looking at my hand and I have a no energy hydrapple. And I push the hydrapple because in my head I'm thinking, okay, well, my only way to one-of-one is for him to whiff boss. And then I draw for turn. Look down at the Prizm cards, look at the meowth in my hand, and I'm like, oh, well, I could have just briar for game against dragapult here. Like, I just totally missed it. He had the boss the next turn. So I was kicking myself for that for sure, because that was a long game. One, two. So if I one-of-one that game, even if I lost the next one, I think I. I still would have, you know, been pretty safe to have at least a tie, which would have been more helpful at that point. So kicked myself for that one a little bit. Game two was just classic dragon, you know, dragon, dragon pull hammers game. There was nothing really notable, just kind of Got off to a slow start and Goldin capitalize on anything thing. So. Yu-Gi-Oh a little bit of a throw too. Yu-Gi-Oh The triple Watchtower double judge. Yu-Gi-Oh A couple people talk about this. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm sure that was. Actually, I was gonna say I'm sure that was weird for you with the judges, but I guess there's no moltres, so maybe it's like kind of. Not really. I mean it. To be honest, I didn't even clock that when we were playing. When I see dragon pulled hammers, those are the only cards I'm really worried about. Yu-Gi-Oh But I didn't even clock the triple Watchtower until. Till well after. But Yu-Gi-Oh Interesting list for sure. He played well though. Credit to him. So I. That one was on me. Yu-Gi-Oh Then I guess you hit the. The ghost deck. I feel like this has to be a good matchup, right? Oh, I mean if you go back and watch. Yu-Gi-Oh it. It good matchup for Hydrapple for sure. I think he just had. one-of-one has no. No disruption. Like your disruption is your bronzong Evolution jammer plus the dusk nor. But. And as the Hydra apple, you can just. Even if you go second, if they were to, you know, evolution lock you. You just set up an ogre pawn and start swinging. Yu-Gi-Oh they can't do much. He didn't go for the but Erie in game one. So it was kind of just. I kind of just ran over his board. He got the lowpunny in game two. But you know, you can go back and watch that string clip where I went from. I sacked the ogre pawn to enable the stamp in my hand and went from an apple and a Chikorita and play to knocking out the megalopony in one turn on stream there. So Yu-Gi-Oh that was a little silly. Yu-Gi-Oh you took out Blitzels brother there on the pull. And then I guess you hit another Lucario on the winning end, actually. Lucario. Yu-Gi-Oh Lucari on the winning but one comment about Thomas is that all respect to him because I flipped. He flipped about probably six or seven tails between games two and three on his hammers compared to I flipped one coin which was tumbling attack on turn one in game three to knock out his badoo. And if any of those flips go differently, you know, I'm not even in top eight. So you know, just keeping that in the back of your mind when you go to the finals, the universe has a way of correcting itself. Yu-Gi-Oh you got it. You always. You have to play good Pokemon, but you always have to have Some things go your way, so. And then, Yu-Gi-Oh Josh. And the winning in on the Lucario. This was like a repeat of the Moltres game against the Dragapult in round four, where I start Applin in game one. And he goes Riolu attach. Search out a second Riolu Premium power pro knockout. And I just go stamp him to two. Knockout is Riolu. And he evolves into mega Lucario and passes. So gotta watch out for that stamp even if you're not playing against Dragon Ball. That's all I have to say. Makes sense then. I mean, you got slop in top eight, which is a good matchup. I know you lost in the finals, but I still think it's a good matchup. And then is Slow King a hard matchup or do you think this one's, like, fine? I think it depends on the Slow King build. I think a build like that, like Mark here, I actually think this is one of your best matchups as a hydrapple. The really funny thing is the reason this matchup so good is one of everyone's least favorite mechanics, and that's the terra attribute on Ogre Pond and the fact that they play no boss. So you can. Depending on how the draws go. Like, if they. Even if they draw well, you can push a one prizer and just have ogre ponds in play and just build up a hand. Celebi is great in this matchup to where you can sit there and traverse time until they knock you out. And from there you can just kind of explode your board. And you play stamp. I play judge. And you know, they play, you know, a lot of these sloking lists these days are not even playing Bengal. Mark played one. But even with that, they just really struggle. And you, you know, you play four stadium yourself. So their stadiums almost never sticking. They always have to refind it. I think there's a lot of. A lot of reasons, actually that the Hydra apple deck matches up really well. And they have to put a bunch of exs into Blue Ice well. So it's like they're always gonna have to put King in play to, like, consistently play the game. Like, and they don't have a way to, you know, disrupt my hand or anything like that. So the one thing that can make it scary is like the monkey drapeon package. But, like, that's a lot to fit and makes your deck less consistent. So even if they are playing that, then they can, you know, be even more susceptible to like, your judging your stamp. So. Yu-Gi-Oh that makes sense. And obviously the Finals. And that was a stream. That was very unfortunate. Not even just the flipping, like game two. Like he had the teal dance into a grass, otherwise he'd just one-of-one And he just like talking about that. But I'm thinking about that moment just as much still. I know. Like, bro, I was watching it and like, you Goldin see him get the grass on the angle, but he like moved it really quick with his hand. I'm like, yep, he hit the grass. Yu-Gi-Oh the way he, the way he was moving, I was like, yep, we're going to game three. Like, I feel like that one would make me, well, not mad, but that one would one-of-one me more than the triple Kang thing because the triple king thing happens. But it's like the odds of hitting that grass. Oh, it's probably similar to triple heads. Well, one and eight for triple heads. Yu-Gi-Oh pretty sure that was the only. That was his only grass. I think he had some other. He had some other outs. I remember when I was watching him, like, that wasn't the only card he could get, but that was one of the ones still for sure. But I just feel bad either way. Dude, like you said it yourself, it kind of just course corrects from when that guy flipped seven out of eight tails or whatever, right? And you know, it's one of those things if, if top poor Thomas flips, you know, one or two heads. Like I. I'm not in top cut. Like, I don't even have the chance to. To make it this far. So. And that's a great mentality. Like, I think, I think a lot of people can take notes from that mentality because like, I, like, even this weekend, man, I was talking to so many people that just love to. And it's fine, it happens, it's human nature. But so many people love to play the victim. And it is such a detrimental mindset for playing Pokemon because if you play the victim all the time, it is so hard to get better because you are always going to find excuses for yourself. You're always going to find reasons that are so far out of your control, quote unquote, that made you lose the game. And it just demotivates people and it gets people out of the game. So the way you're approaching this is honorable. And I, I honestly really respect it too, because that's not an easy thing to go through in the finals. But to see in the bright side and be like, hey man, I just made the finals of a regional that I maybe had no business being in for the most part. From that round 13. That's a good look. And I think a lot of people should take notes from that. Like, Yu-Gi-Oh kudos, for real. I mean, it's so easy to think back of, you know, if, you know, if this happened, if that happened. If I played tool scrapper, I would have had it. You know, like I was saying, if I wasn't playing bulu, because I would have been playing scrapper over bulu, I wouldn't have one-of-one my top eight match. So it's, you know, all these little things that it's easy to say one thing when something happens, but when another thing happens and you get lucky, then you're just the best player ever. Like, well, that's just it. And it's like, I think there's so many ways to. It always sticks out to you more. So when you miss something versus when you hit something. Right. You could have the same odds for both, but you're always going to remember when you miss something. You probably will never remember when you hit something that you needed. And on any deep rock, no matter what, all three of us can attest to this, you need to have stuff go your way and stuff has to go your way. Yu-Gi-Oh I would say, you know, in a deep run, you're going to get lucky. You have to one-of-one a game or two where you draw bad and then you just kind of play yourself out of it. And so it goes both ways, right. You need to be lucky and then you also need to manage the. Unluck the unlucky situations to the best of your ability and just give yourself those outs. And I feel like I did a fantastic job of that this weekend. Football, baby. Find a way. Fourth quarter magic. Yu-Gi-Oh no, it was good. Like, awesome. Like getting some more in depth things in your rounds. I had a couple actually questions for you in terms of like, gameplay things. I think a lot of people. All right, this comes up when I play, if people ask me. So my first one for you is, do you ever bench or Chikorita or Applin before the stadium or do you always wait to like, just evolve them all at once? I mean, it depends if, you know, my opponent's not playing, disruption, that sort of thing. Like, I'll, I'll hold. But also you definitely, definitely okay with benching them early. That way you can manually evolve in situations where you do whiff the stadium, you know, because typically there's not a whole lot of punish to that. So I would say, Yu-Gi-Oh depends contextually. But especially if you're playing like open deck list or you, you know, have a general semblance of your opponent's archetype and you know, the kind of hand disruption they play that can inform those decisions as well. Yu-Gi-Oh that makes sense. I guess the other big thing is we haven't talked about is what are you normally trying to heal with ripening charge? I guess it's probably dragapult the matchup it comes up the most. But what are some normal scenarios where ripening charge makes a big difference? I would say it really. It really most of the time doesn't make a huge difference, really just dragapult math on occasion. At Worlds I played against Matthias and the Bomb. The Bomb Alakazam list in round two. I was his only Swiss loss by the way. And he hit a alakazam attack for 200. And I was able to heal 30 out of Ranger Dusk nor in that matchup. So that was pretty funny. That wasn't on my bingo card for the day, that's for sure. But I mean it's. It's the little things. There's nothing huge, I would say actually against Crustle, it can be relevant if you're attacking with Meganium. If they're not able to get double spiky energy, you can heal out of range of like certain spiky energy math. So that can be relevant as well, but always just be kind of on the lookout. But I wouldn't say there's a whole lot of like outside of like certain dragonfl math, there's not a whole lot of, you know, scripted scenarios where this comes up all the time. Yu-Gi-Oh I think I know my experience as well. Yu-Gi-Oh go ahead, Neil. Oh, sorry. Oh, you're good. You asked your question. No, I was just gonna say like that's my experience playing this deck as well. Like it felt like actually the ripening charge doesn't come up that often for me. I was just curious if that had any. Like a lot of the times it's just plus one energy onto, you know, a non ogre pawn is a great play, but you know. Right. But I'm charged on the fez or Meowth. You know, those are. Those are very impactful, impactful things. The bonus heel for sure. Very off topic question, but how much did it bother you that bug catching set didn't have a full art? As someone who I know likes to max out your decks, how much does it bother you? I mean I don't max out all my decks, but it definitely annoys me for sure, you know. 2024, Ben, you lend me those bosses at Worlds 2024, didn't you? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh The. The Lysanders. Right. Yu-Gi-Oh I was. I only had like two bosses something of the same R and Ben came and saved the day for me in Hawaii Worlds. That's how I knew he's a. He's a real Blinger and that is something that would just. That would just bother me. It's like there's just no full art for this. I think I would just defer to all the play pack hollows at that point. But I saw you had the 30th anniversary grass energies. I'm paying attention man. I'm paying attention. I like. I like your style. Shout out to Ryan. Ryan Prusac for hooking me up with those. Oh hell Yu-Gi-Oh But I would say like I. I saw people commenting too like how nice those energy looked on stream. Yes. They definitely caught my attention. I was like they didn't look that great IRL I don't think but on stream they looked unbelievable. And Chip pointed out too, I think at one point you. You might not have heard it yet but he was like Yu-Gi-Oh he's got all those nice energies from the 30th anniversary set. And I was like oh damn, you have my twitch chat in there. Being like a 30th anniversary isn't legal yet. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh You always have to know it alls in there. But Yu-Gi-Oh no, honestly like through and through man. Awesome Ryan, we were so happy to see you do well. I was cheering for you the whole way. Glad you got it done. I Goldin think of anyone more deserving to be honest guys. Yu-Gi-Oh you've been. You've been popping off lately. Kieran, I don't know if you want to go through maybe like the top eight decks real quick. We can kind of. Yu-Gi-Oh To be honest, like it was actually a fairly. Actually I don't know if normal's right word. Like none of the decks were like crazy but it's like there's only two Dragon Balls in top eight and lots of dragapult hates. I mean the list that one was like kind of standard except there was actually Heroes cape which I feel like we saw that for a little bit I feel like. And then it got changed in favor of like Unfair Snap and Prime Catcher felt like it world. So I mean the heroes cape is basically just like make your dragon pulp matchup like better. Like if you just slaps on a clefairy they just can't knock it out. Yu-Gi-Oh So Yu-Gi-Oh I guess it's just like going forward Is this just how people play it is like you just play the cape just so you have an even better matchup or it comes up in mirror sometimes too actually if you slap it on Kangaskhan like it's like a massive king or even your clefairy. So like they can't one shot it. So I guess that's just the big takeaway from this is like what becomes the default slop. Not even list, just slop a spec. I think. And I think the answer is still like there's no default aspec. But now heroes cape is like in the mix. Like we might even see like a 1/3 split for each of them because I think they each have merit for sure. Well, I think too like the reality of the situation with the slot box decks is you're not finding your A spec that reliably to begin with. Like I remember trying these decks like even Raging Bolt and all these like. Well I guess this is Raging Bull, but like slot box Raging Bolt. Know you, you only have one cipher and you have one aspec. So you're not finding it that consistently. You can always meow for it, but it doesn't feel great because you need your supporters on so many turns that I've found that aspect to be mildly interchangeable whether you're playing prime or unfair. Like whatever it is, right? You're. I. I would like to hear this from Dylan himself or maybe from Blitzel or something on how often they actually see this aspec. I would argue I played against AOB at naic and I mean the prime catcher, you know, in that matchup was broken. But I also think that, you know, slop, these lists are probably going to change a little bit with, with mew, right? Like so like how much is that going to impact, you know, kind of what a spec you want to Blue Ice well? Because on paper I feel like MEW helps your dragapult matchup. So like do you need the cape for dragapult then? Do you want those extra percentage points or do we want to switch around, you know, back to a different aspect to, you know, pick up some percentage there? If mew's gonna add some percentage to drag a pull without the cape, like, you know, how does that impact things as well? Yu-Gi-Oh it's a good point. And like, I mean this deck is already so full of random stuff that the MEW is gonna probably help it a lot, right? It makes your boards a lot less clunky. I'm curious to see like when I first saw MEW I was like this card seems perfectly balanced just because of how low HP it has. I am very curious to see how well it does like that low HP is to me at least like Zebra concerning. I know a lot of people are kind of looking past it, but just like how much better that might make Palt Nor is terrifying to me. So curious to see what actually happens with it. So I'm glad those we have people in Frankfurt being our guinea pigs, so I don't have to find out myself. Yu-Gi-Oh And Brisbane. So we'll have two regionals to see if people cook up this weekend. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean otherwise like, I mean Rohit was just playing a very standard dragapult. So was Liam. I mean Mark was. He had both an Yu-Gi-Oh lapse in his Slow king, which you don't always see. I mean this is another deck I think that can use Mew. You know, like you can copy Slow king on the bench. Then you don't have to have a two retreater in the or three retreater in the active. The unknown from the new set. You could play it in here. You can play the Espeon if you want to play like the Coffee Grigas and play more of a spread version. So I mean that doesn't matter that much for this event. But like looking forward, I think this is another deck that gets a slight buff with the celebration set, whereas most of the other decks I think just don't get anything. So I think it's. It's worth noting too that Mark played Power Glass and Boomerang energy. Yu-Gi-Oh lots of. Very interesting. Yu-Gi-Oh If you ask Josh in his top eight match, he was not thrilled about that. Yu-Gi-Oh Josh was just banking on LGM to move. Move stuff around and Power Glass and Boomerang in tandem kind of invalidated that. But I think Marketa, you know, a fun, fun Slow king list for sure that is really good into that. Like that Dragon Ball Hammer strat of just like kind of going in with Fez too, right? Yep. That like really mitigates the power of Fez. Unfair stamp, Cruel arrow. Because suddenly there's an energy on that Slow king. And that thing is. Is pretty scary. So I, I like that addition actually. That's a really good way to combat that because most, most Paul players, I would say probably like 90 of Paul players were not playing Shaman this weekend. Yu-Gi-Oh I agree. I mean Josh made top cut. I mean the big thing is he played the. The single Prizm Alakazam and he did face two crosses when I was looking earlier. So it actually did end up mattering for him. Otherwise, it's still like, on that control style. I think he credited Caris for the list again. She's still the Queen of Alakazam. So, Yu-Gi-Oh Elgym Nighttime mine just the control package to have a decent time into Dragon Ball. But Alakazam as a whole actually had a really bad weekend, though. Like, the one-of-one rate was 42.7. And I think that makes sense. I mean, like, every single Dragon Pult you looked at was playing Judge, right? I think other decks were playing stuff like Judgers Rosex, so I just think the meta got more hostile for it. So the deck is still like insanely powerful. It's just a lot easier to counter than like all the other decks. So it'll be interesting. Like, it was only 6% play rate. Actually. None of the decks like, had that big of a play rate. I think that was also surprising. But Yu-Gi-Oh I think Alakazam is probably gonna stay in this range going forward. We'll still probably see a couple of them doing well every tournament. But as a whole, I think the deck's not that, like, poised to do that well, in my opinion, given that everyone's countering it right now. So, Yu-Gi-Oh we'll have to see for sure. And then Zork was the second most popular deck. That also surprised me. I don't know about you guys, but I was not expecting that. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh me too. I, like, honestly, it seemed like a decent play. Like, I think we all knew Al Kazam was going to kind of be on the back burner this weekend. It's a little bit too much going around for it to deal with. But Yu-Gi-Oh Zoroark pumping up. I guess it does make sense. Like, when you think of, like, who is the second Horseman in this format? Maybe it is Zorark when you think of it as a whole. But it was weird because, like, it popped up in play, but there weren't a whole lot of, like, huge names playing it. So even make top 32, I don't think. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I think it's worth noting, I think the. The list that Thord and Liam played at Worlds, while Zorwark has all these intricate lines, I feel like it's seemingly more approachable to kind of the average player base of, oh, look, I have Judge and Watchtower, and I'm just going to play for boss and, you know, take knockouts. So maybe, you know, maybe that has a little bit to do with it as well. You know, with all the tomes and all those kinds of shenanigans that just adds so many more, you know, not this sort of work. Deck has plenty of layers, but maybe that's less daunting for. For some players out there who wanted to pick up the deck for the weekend. Yu-Gi-Oh That's a real thing. Absolutely. I like, I can't think of the amount of times I've heard someone say I'd love to play Zoroark but it's too hard for me. Right. Like that kind of thing is. That's a big deal. It's like Judge Pass Zork. Sweet. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean Slow King actually had a pretty good weekend as well. There's the one top four, a couple more in top 16. I mean Polaris, another first year master with a good debut. Like he was playing the dust Nor Law pony deck. Ross Cawthon, obviously one of the goats. He was also playing a lot of plenty of dust in our deck which I feel like most of us have said is not a real deck but now it has a top 16 and top 32. So another deck that you can help as well possibly. Yu-Gi-Oh So that might be a more real deck going forward because Yu-Gi-Oh Copying the bronze on with the free ro cheater is actually pretty good. So got a hide and sneak at 29 and 19 as well. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh So. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh That's sick. I didn't even notice that. I mean high does he kind of makes sense given the fact that like we expected Alakazam to go way up and that's like an auto one-of-one Dragon Pulse, like it's a slightly favored matchup. Here's the thing though, that that hide and seek player had to beat real decks once. All the Alakazam players flopped in day one. True. Well, he didn't face any Alexander actually. So two hunch grows. Basic box. He only lost one game actually and it was to to pull. So I mean you can still lose the poll with this deck. You just get stamped and then draw nothing so. Or you get achieved in the start, no trialing. So Yu-Gi-Oh I mean hide and sneak is. I think it's a decent deck actually. One of my kids got second in juniors with it so it's maybe a bit slept on I think. I don't think it's tier one or anything, but I think it's actually decent. And I guess the other interesting deck was Henry's 443 like dusk nor 332 dragonfold deck with the new upper. It was actually really cool innovation. Henry told me he doesn't think this deck is very Good. I think this is Henry being Henry. I think the deck is solid. Yu-Gi-Oh This is just, like, you just straight up try to scam your opponent. Like, you're, like, trying to do kind of like the Alakazam Dust Nor deck is like, you just pop, play red card, put that Neo up or down, and then just be like, all right. Like, you're just getting disrupted. Plus Dragapult in your board, wiped. So a pretty interesting build from him, for sure. He's been. He told me he built it on a Friday, so. Oh, really? Yu-Gi-Oh Doesn't get much more scammy than this. This is. This is a max scam. This is like calling old people and selling them healthcare or whatever they do over the phones these days. It's. It's a bad one. But I looked at this, and I was like. Like, how does this act with Dragapult? But then I saw the new opera. Okay, this makes a little bit of sense. It's just. This is just like a concoction that I feel like is something that. Like, there's no way. This was extensively tested, but he still did so well with it. Like, it's just such a testament to how good Henry is as a player. I think the average player picks this up, or I don't think the average player comes up with this in general. But, Yu-Gi-Oh this is. This is a Henry Chow special, and I think he's kind of going down that tor d arc right now where he's like, how can I make this game harder for myself by playing nonsense and still doing well with it. Yu-Gi-Oh So, I mean, he did pretty well. I got top 32. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, not too bad. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Not too shabby. No, he didn't tie the one-of-one He tied. He one-of-one He would be top 16. I will say, I feel like this is the kind of list that even some casual people who, like, aren't a fan of pult will pick up and be like, oh, this is very funny. I'm just gonna pop three Dusk wars in one turn and, you know, and then one-of-one But, you know, I'm. I would have loved to watch more of Henry's games because I'm sure they were entertaining to say. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know if he got on stream this time and actually. But, Yu-Gi-Oh I'm sure they were entertaining. He did, I think. I'm pretty sure he did. I need to go back and look, but I'm pretty sure he was. Yu-Gi-Oh I have to go back and look as well. So don't. Don't quote. But, Yu-Gi-Oh no really cool deck. Other than that I'm trying to think if there's anything else interesting. Oh, one-of-one also made that's three law puny bronze lungs. Yu-Gi-Oh Then like here you have like the bouncing back after he got absolutely clip farmed on scream. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean Crustle had a good one-of-one rate weekend but again none of them converted top 32. It's felt like people are a bit more ready. So Yu-Gi-Oh I mean I think there's like a sprinkling of like the random archetypes in top 32 but I feel like we have that like every tournament like and then I mean a top four with only one dragon pole and non dragonfall finals. That was actually pretty exciting. So Yu-Gi-Oh that's kind of all I have to think about this tournament we'll see next week or this weekend what happens at the two regionals with celebrations. We'll see if anything interesting comes out of that but hopefully something interesting happens to shake up the meta. Otherwise we have to wait until the request and laic. So I trust the, I trust the Australian deck builders to cook. I mean they have some of the best deck builders in the game over there so hopefully they can come up with something innovative. If they're rocking dragon hammers then we're in trouble. Well Henry, I was talking about worlds. He's like stupid high on the mux so he's like, he thinks it's really good. So that would be my player to watch this weekend, Henry Brand to play some crazy mew concoction. That'd be very cool. The one thing I wanted to point out too that now that I'm looking at the standings is this tournament could have looked a lot different if 1121 got into cut. This is crazy. It is. We got to talk about at some point how crazy is that 1121 no longer makes cut but like look at this, look at the amount of people. This would have been an 8 person asym into cut if Nicholas had one less point. So talking about this, if I had id'd I believe it would have been or I think there was a. There was, there was almost a situation where that could have happened. Yu-Gi-Oh well there was. There's one table like ID out a cut. Like table three. Yu-Gi-Oh like Bradley and Matthew like they ID themselves out of cut. But like that was the table to me and Josh was like. Or my. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Josh was asking me if I wanted ID and I, I had everyone in my ear telling me I had to play and you know, I was not in the mood of woofing cut off that and you know, I felt, I felt pretty good. So we played well. I guess as soon as these people Id'd like you could have id'd, but then you would have triggered the 16 person ASYM. So like, Yu-Gi-Oh would have been legendary in its own right. But I felt I, I with Josh's vibe. He, you know, he's a good player, but I could, I could tell he was real nervous and I felt a little extra, A little extra confident. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean you basically like just treat this as Asim, basically. So it's like your id, you're just doing asym anyways. I mean, I guess the guaranteed like extra money for top 16 matters to you. I guess you can tie, but if you feel confident in the matchup, then you definitely just play. I mean, it's Lucario, so that was certainly a matchup where I was more than happy to see that point. Yu-Gi-Oh my run. No, exactly, I agree. You mean. I think I would have done the same thing there. So cool. Yu-Gi-Oh Anything else, Ben, interesting to say about Hydrapple the tournament, Anything like that? No, I mean, I mean, like I said, you know, it always helps to put everything in perspective. You know, seven out of eight times I'm a regional champion. Most likely this wasn't to be. And that's no shade to Dylan at all. I think he played fantastic and, and all the credit to him. I, I think he has a YouTube channel up too. I, I don't remember what it's. It's called, but check him out for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh I saw on Twitter like someone posted that he like got to 2000 RCS Elo. And then I think like they put it like screenshot his video. So that's actually another person just grinding life and like doing well. You know, you have me, who has played more cube more of the council cube in the last six months than any amount of standard. And you have Dylan who's out there grinding live. But I think it just shows that you can have different philosophies in the game and still come to the same success. So if you're a more average, you know, if you're working a real job, if you aren't spending dozens of hours playing the game, I mean, take a look at my run and just know that, you know, if you play well, get a little lucky, you can still get there and have, have yourself a great tournament. So I mean, I've been playing this game a long time, like I said in the intro and you know, was a dream come True this past weekend. So shout out to all the everyone for all the support out there. Yu-Gi-Oh big congrats, man. Yu-Gi-Oh it could have been a really rough time for the employee. Man. I'm a fan of the pod, so when Anil hit me up, you know, I already have more people in my DMs asking me to go on, but I knew I had to hop on with you guys. I appreciate you having me. Yu-Gi-Oh we appreciate you coming on, man, picking us. Yu-Gi-Oh we're a fan of you. Now the hell the rules are reversed. That was, that was one of the things for me this weekend was the amount of love I got off the stage for Top four. And I had people in the crowd already asking me for autographs. I was like, what is going on? Like it's wild, right? Comes out too fast. Signature now kind of actually life changing, you know, Pokemon community, life changing event. I'm sure I'll be seen as the triple tails guy for, for a long time now and that's okay. Cool title. It'll do things to you too. Like it like it's crazy how like one deep run can like really change your. Your. Your life and your outlook on Pokemon too. Like you'll see this deep run and you'll see now like I'm sure you already have. Like people are paying attention to what you say. People care to hear about your opinions and like this might push you into a YouTube channel. It's going to push you to medify. It might push you to coach people full time or whatever. Right. Like so this stuff can really change your life. So. No, I. Thank you so much. I. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I'm certainly seeing that. But Yu-Gi-Oh just a normal guy working an everyday job. So. Amen brother. All that's on the back burner for now. But like we were saying, I do plan on putting out a guide for some people. And you know, you can follow me on Twitter at bendystraw, underscore PTCG and you know, I'll post there when, when I get that going. Like I said, I. I aim to have that hopefully at least that initial guide out by Friday. But I also work a real nine to five so cut me some slack if I don't. Black will be cut. Absolutely. Yu-Gi-Oh We will have it linked down below for you in the comments too. So hopefully we get a lot of people. I'm gonna buy your guy cause I one-of-one you 20 bucks. Like I said, Ben was nice enough to throw me a play Pokemon. One of these. These like hard ones. The Crosshatch Ones I was missing a dark energy for my deck. So he was nice enough to throw me one of the line before the tournament. Little did I know I was talking to a. A future regional finalist. But you know what might get him to sign that dark energy now. And I one-of-one him 20 bucks, so I'll be buying his guide. Was there anything else, Ben? Any shout outs you wanted to give or anything like that? No. I mean, Yu-Gi-Oh Shout out to my friends, family. Shout out to all the Chicago locals. Shout out to protect sleeves. By the way, might be picking. Picking up a sponsor. By protect round nine, I got deck checked. I hadn't changed a sleeve all day and the judge asked me if I had just re sleeved because my deck looked pristine. I'm not making that up for, for the sponsorship that I. That's genuinely what happened. But no, you know, shout out to you guys for having me on. Of course. Like I said, I'm a huge fan. Love tuning in and watching you guys yap. So appreciate it. A lot less sports talk this week than maybe you're used to sometimes, but I know you'll get back on that. Yu-Gi-Oh we locked in, I guess a little bit since we had a guest this week. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh the junkies are not going to be happy with this one, but all right. They could wait a week. Shout out to you guys for having me on. And I really do appreciate it. And that's how, you know, something important happened because Kawhi signed an extension and the trade went through and we didn't say a single thing. I mean, that was like expected, I feel like. But you're right, it was expected. But this is normally something we would have, we would have touched on at least. Yu-Gi-Oh Well, here you are touching on it so it all comes. Comes back around. Yu-Gi-Oh I guess I gotta shut up before I break my own rule. All right. Kieran, you all good too? Yu-Gi-Oh I'm good. Nothing else I think to say. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Yu-Gi-Oh Let us know down below if you have any questions for Ben. We'll get him to patrol the comments regularly and help out wherever he can go buy his guide. We'll leave all his links down below if you want to hear more from him. Him. But above everything, we appreciate all you guys tuning in. If this is your first time being here because of Ben, please do consider subscribing helps us out a bunch. We release episodes whenever we feel like it, which has been less than usual lately. But we're. We're getting back. We're getting back. So every Wednesday. Hopefully we'll yap your ear off. Well, thank you for being here, and we'll see you next week. Peace. Later. Peace out.