The State of Rouge Decks

Hello everyone and welcome to the Reason Effective podcast. I'm Tim Topps as I was joined by Uncommon Fossil. Hello. Glad to be here today. Yep. And today we're honestly talking about some of our, I guess favorite cards or cards are just kind of cool and decks that are cool, but unfortunately not that good. Recently we talked about, I mean, you know, we love to talk about different cars and decks we enjoy and different ways to make them interesting and good and to kind of mess around with them. But you know, let's be honest, a lot of these cards in the Pokemon TCG just aren't really good enough. And again, you know, just like destroyed by the top decks obviously like Dragapult and things like that. Right? Yes, although. Yu-Gi-Oh correct, correct. Although World's Dragapult's conversion rate to day two wasn't very good. So. But one-of-one that might. It's alt art of it. Part of it, which I'll just talk about up front is we're looking through Limitless data. Both a lot of it's played out Limitless, which is the online stuff, and then just Limitless, which is. Does the IRL tournaments, particularly Worlds, just happen so that you know a bunch of players and good players know what they're doing there with solid decks, but the way they classify things gets a little wonky. So Yu-Gi-Oh that, that's part that, that's, that's why sometimes we're trying to try to be fair with it. But one-of-one sometimes the classifications get a little weird with things. Yu-Gi-Oh so you did, you know, Battle World, Zombie 1 and stuff like that. And I'd say, you know, I think there was theoretically some people predicting it would do meaningfully worse than it did. But. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, obviously though when you look at like the world championships and these high level tournaments that represent thing, it is meaningful, especially to those players, but to a lot of other players in terms of like data to say exactly how good a deck is, you know, most people aren't really playing on a level that's Zebra close. Some decks, it matters a lot, I'd say, you know, like Drag P is a deck where there's a lot of decisions and stuff like that. And the difference between like, you know, top players in the world and just average players is going to be pretty meaningful. So something like play Limitless data is going to be closer. Certainly there are, you know, a lot of good people playing in these tournaments as well. Right. Um, but you will see, I mean it's a lot easier, you know, to get into as well. You'll see A lot more silly things. And also, you know, the world's obviously, it's like a big qualification element and all that. So. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh So look, I'll go just talk about Worlds briefly and then we'll probably get to the online stuff because you get more diversity there. But, but Worlds. And I was particularly looking at the conversion rate which is from day moving on from day one to day two. And there's a few decks which. Which had like really high conversion rates, like 100%, but that was played by one person. So actually I'm g. Bring that deck up first. And this is a Sharpedo toxicity deck. I. I haven't really played Sharpedo. It's not a big favorite of mine. I would say it's. It's not a great card for this idea of cards, but if you like it, I think it would fit as the cards that are cool but are. Aren't good enough. But I think the fact that it came in at world, it came in 50th overall means if you know what you're doing in build it carefully. And you really got to know what you're doing though too. Like, this person probably played a whole lot of mega Sharpedo so that they knew everything with it. And no one going in the tournament had really thought about mega Sharpedo matchups. So they knew, you know, so they had a big advantage there. But it just shows, I think any. Well, not any card, but a lot of these cards can be good even if they're not that good. You can get good results at times. Yu-Gi-Oh you really, as they're saying you to like prep a lot and put a lot of. I mean, you know, obviously there's. People are putting a lot of effort into the top decks as well, but for a deck that is, you know, less played, you need to figure out things. I mean, maybe Sharpio is not the most complicated card in the game or anything like that, but need to still figure out a bunch of things with it and you know, counts more. More on your own, which, which is interesting to see here. And Yu-Gi-Oh again, the, the conversion rate, obviously it was, you know, only played by one person there, so it's cool. Right. It's not like, you know, it is not meaningless, but it does also obviously a very small sample size as well. Right. If a lot of people, if it was a lot of people were playing the deck, the coverage rate would have been low. People wouldn't prepare for it. It would have been one of the worst performing decks there probably. That's the way that, that Goes like for instance, conversion rate 1. A very poor deck was Dragapult Dusknar. That was less than 10% conversion rate. But I don't think Dragapult, you know, no one's going to say Dragapult's a bad card. Dusknoise a bad card. It's a bad deck combo. It's just you know, part, part of, it's just the way things fell that day and perhaps it wasn't the best dragapult build. But you know, these stats are, you know, just showing the limitations of the stats there like with Dragapult Dust. Nor have not having a underwhelming conversion rate there. Yu-Gi-Oh And it's not like this conversion rate is like terrible. No, it's like, you know, I don't remember what percentage of the players compared to day two. It's obviously, you know, it's a little low, but obviously people are, you know, prepping for it and stuff like that. And also I will say though, sometimes if a deck is just, you know, mediocre and people play it a lot, then it will, you know, it can one-of-one the tournament. Right. And I don't think that's what's happening with Dragonfall, but things like that are possible. And sometimes this leads to decks that are someone mediocre being really overhyped. I think that kind of applies with newer decks where you see people play them a lot. I think you know, my extra might fall within that range. And also, I mean you can, you could look at like hide and seek when I was first. First came out even maybe still, still now you just the more recent cards, um, and then on the other side, decks that are just not really given a chance by the community as a whole. You know, I'm a big fan of the, the no cars in hand deck, the all out deck one. People aren't really playing it like at all. And you know, it's just like regardless, like just not really anything at all. And so it's kind of like lost its chance. And so people aren't like, you know, building off each other with, with these Topps of decks. Not that the deck's like Zebra good, but you know, you know, it kind of just falls off and like disappears. So you can have these kind of moments where things just kind of amplify off. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh No, as decks get Hyper up, certainly more people play it. They get bet they, they do. Well you get a lot of people like a top cut if a deck is played. Like if 20 of people just show up a tournament play A deck, you're gonna get good representation, top cut and possibly decent chance of winning the tournament. So Yu-Gi-Oh people see that, they play it more, it gets more refined. Like you said, what, what you do on the other side of it, where sometimes the statistics, stats for the deck get hurt, is when a deck is really Hyper up on the. Especially the online tournaments, then you get a lot of people playing it as well and, and particularly a lot of people that aren't that good. Right. Because if you're not that good, you're looking for a deck to play. You just look at what's out there, played a lot that does well. And then a lot of weaker players gravitate towards the deck as well. So you end up with a lot of weak players at times. So sometimes the. Potentially the one of the best decks out there has a low one-of-one percentage, I think particularly on online play, just because, you know, it attracts lower skilled players, which it's. It's not bad. Look, lower skilled players go to, you know, want to play. That's good. It's a good way to get decks. But you know, again, the stats get skewed for different reasons, both upward and downward. Yu-Gi-Oh And honestly I think that might even have to do with Dragon Balls for instance, out world. It's not that obviously the players are like bad, but there is some skill difference. Yu-Gi-Oh And so potentially people who are enough, like just, you know, weaker players relative to other world's players might be, you know, leaning more towards Dragon Blue Ice it's like a safer pick. You don't want to be someone who's a weaker player. And then also with like a potentially weaker deck. Right. That, that feels kind of bad. And so, you know, then we see a lot of people obviously leaning towards dragapult because it's the in some ways safer play and, and also with. With online term and just in general, even though Dragon Ball, it's not a deck that's. I mean it's like Hyper up. I guess. It's. It is good. It's not new but you know, you do see people, you know, dra. Gravitating towards the top decks, even the hype decks and the good decks. Yu-Gi-Oh And talking dragapult like it. I was just looking at it. It was brought played by about 46% of the people at world, so obviously it's well known. Everyone's so part of what I'm getting at here. Everyone's also, if you're not playing dragapult, you're thinking about how, how to beat Dragapult. And obviously there are Dragapult counters out there like Lily's clefairy particular. So you're. You have a way to beat Dragapult with. If you're not bringing Dragapult to the tournament. Right. That, that's like. That's like one of your first things you're thinking through which does make it, you know, make makes life tougher for of you know, a top deck like Dragapult. Yu-Gi-Oh But regardless, obviously we need to understand what makes a deck good and powerful to understand the other side of it. But we are mostly talking about these silly decks. And so you have. You have another one you want to talk about as well, right? Yu-Gi-Oh One more from Worlds. Probably it from Worlds for me. And this one made two people played it, brought it to Worlds. One person made top cut and they came in I believe 150. Day two. Not. Not top. Day two. Sorry. Yu-Gi-Oh day two. Sorry. Day two. They converted is what he meant. Yu-Gi-Oh they're 115 I believe. And that's Mega Chandelure. Now I like, I like Chandelure. I actually end up I'm playing the deck without the Mega in it. I. I find that the Mega is often not the best thing. But the way, you know, my, my, my non Mega deck is very similar in its build as well. Mega Chandelure, you know, it's a Mega. Honest. I will say I have a lot of Megas that I think I might talk about because the Megas I think are disappointing in general. Just giving up three prizes. It's a awful lot to overcome, I always say. So I. I just think the Megas are. I think right now the Megas struggle, but once Dragapult rotates, maybe the life the world will change. Right. When the Mega Megas will become more prominent. But with Mega Chandelort it's got part of what the Mega itself is. Okay. Opponent's active retreat cost is. Pokemon retreat cost is one more and then the attack does 130 plus 50 more for the each energy energy in the retreat costs. So you're doing what two or you know, they'll have two or three, let's say. So you're doing 230 to 80, which isn't enough. You know. The problem is you're not one shotting another mega and that you're not even necessarily. Certainly not direct one shot like Dragapult either. Unless you have a loose clefairy in which case you know why you play a Mega Chandelure with the deck probably well, you have it because you've got to worry about Dragapult. But you know, it also has the, the fun to me, the single Prizm chandelure. Each player draws a card and then you have some other alternatives in it. They get to play Comfy. It gets a little bit of alternate wind conditions as well. Trying to deck out your opponent with Comfy and then also has the Elgin in it, which I can't play when I don't play the Mega, which there you move in energy from the active Pokemon to on their bench. If you get something stuck there, which obviously you know, you, you keep bossing up you, you have multiple Mega Chandlers in play, get those energies off and they just are stuck there until you one-of-one the game there. So you know, it's, it's a, it's Mega Chandler in and of itself just isn't good enough. It starts to have some viability in that there's a single Prizm that works with it. And then it does have like the Comfy, the Elgin that you can work with it. So you can kind of put together a deck that works with enough synergy. But in and of itself, the Mega Chandelier I think is very much an underwhelming card. Yu-Gi-Oh And honestly I think, I think the single price handler is also underwhelming. I think it is better than the Mega Chandelier. I think some people have gotten that confused with thinking then that the single person is good. It's like an pretty not good card, I'm not gonna lie. You know, we've talked about it in a previous video talking about engines and as an attacker, it's not that good. Yu-Gi-Oh but Yu-Gi-Oh like this is. And this is something that with these like more rogue out there decks, not the machine learns the most out there deck, but it's, it's a bit out there. And certainly its game plan is more different than other decks. Then people will struggle to figure out how to right beat this deck. When you're pressuring them in different unique ways, you know, you look at kind of decking them out, which is something that most players don't really know how to play very well against because it's not something that they're playing against very much. And then also you have the attacking option, I think, you know, and even if you are experienced against these other Topps of like Mill, Dax or control decks, that one-of-one necess. I mean that's not the same as Mega Chandelier. They're all different. So it definitely has some just interesting play patterns which make it so that you're able to, I would say, outskill your opponent, but also kind of out plan your opponent because you're planned for the matchup much more than they are probably, you know, the ins and outs of your deck. And so that is something that can be really good for you. And you're also playing cards that like, they might not even like, know really, really what's going on. Like, they might not know that. Obviously people might not know what's exactly in your deck anyways, but like, they're probably even less likely to know what's in your deck here for more rogue decks. Yu-Gi-Oh definitely a factor there. And I think part of why Mega Chandelure is an example of something that I think you can make it work with in that you get different one-of-one ways, different ways to one-of-one the game. You can attack with Mega Chandelure, potentially you can attack with a single price Tandalore, because that's based damage on cards in hand. So if your opponent starts to worry about that also they're not wanting to get cards in hand, which can make them their game. You know, they might stall in the middle of the game too, which is a plus. And you have the alternate. You have the deck out, the alternate one-of-one condition as well, which. Which makes it work, I think. So that's one thing. If you're going with something more not mainstream, having some options in it, I think is a very good thing thing. And then just a off a side note here, control right now, pure control isn't in a good place. I know Sander went was at Worlds. I saw his list. I can't find it right now. It has some of the same pieces as like the Chandelure list, but it is because it's a strictly controlled deck. I don't think it really has knockout potential. You just. The control doesn't have the pieces right now, which it often doesn't. And so that's a tough way to do it right now. Right now. I don't think control decks are really a very viable fashion right now. Would you agree? Right now? Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I do think, you know, Mega Schindler has. It's kind of a control deck. I personally think it's. It depends how you play it, right? It's gonna have some control elements. And then, I mean, honestly, even like a deck like Dragon's control almost as well. But in terms of the just pure control, it's not very good, I guess. I mean, I haven't really played it on sports control. I'm like, I Just list here and it's. I don't know. I mean, you know, you see cards that are a bunch of cars. We've talked about lgm, Comfy. There's Tribute Pokemon, There are some Walling Pokemon. There are, you know, these like tech cards that you see different decks, but for the most part, I mean, I don't know, it doesn't really do that much. It's that impressive or honestly that different from other decks. I mean, it is different as in it lacks the damage. That's the main difference. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Like Sanders, which I think he's playing Sylveon and Sanders deck. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh Which is similar to Crustal. Crustal actually, you know, did very well at the turn, I think. I think it made. I think a couple people made it in top cut. And I think the conversion rate. I thought there was in top eight, but maybe I'm wrong. They might have. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh there was. There were two. Yu-Gi-Oh So that's good. The conversion rate was 40%. So which is, you know, very good, obviously. So for a deck that was played by 20, you know, 20 is not. Not a meaningful list number of people. So that's not exactly control, but it's related to it. So. But trying to have a. But you're taking knockouts. Having a pure control right now just I don't think is unfortunately really in the cards right now. Sorry, pun not intended. But it's there, right. There are times obviously that Pokemon prints control cards, but you know, they put it so that there aren't enough pieces to go pure control. But control with the ability to swing for knockouts, that, that, that is always a threat, I would say. Yu-Gi-Oh I guess so. Certainly like more I'd say stall decks where you just have one main Pokemon. A relatively simple game plan. One, they're simpler to play. You know, control is not just hard, it's absurdly hard to Blue Ice And then, you know, like, generally it doesn't necessarily have, you know, stone Axe. Control was pretty easy, but other than that and you know, people kind of debate what categorizations are. I do think so much the control deck, I think, you know, Crystal's a stall deck that's pretty easy to play. And then, you know, you look at different control decks, you know, revolving around a bunch of one ofs that do interesting but ultimately not Zebra powerful attacks who stuff to your opponent. You need to know when to use them. You need to know what your opponent's going to do. You need to just be like Zebra careful with it. I will mention in a tournament setting, there are time issues which theoretically make the deck worse as well. Yes. You know, I don't think it's, I don't think that if the timing rules were different, this deck would have been winning. But, you know, obviously there's just so many things to think about with control. Yu-Gi-Oh So what's your question? Was it that is bad or just. Yu-Gi-Oh we just don't have the cards right now. Yu-Gi-Oh I will say I'll just, just. We'll move it on. I think this is the last. We'll move into past worlds here, but after this. But I think I would. I was surprised, I'm not surprised that Crustle had a really good conversion rate from day one to day two, because I think it's, I do think it's a good deck and I think it's certainly very pilotable. I'm surprised, honestly, the two people made top eight with it though. That's what I'm surprised at. Just because I would have thought better players, they handle those wall decks better and I'm surprised that people were able to get in top eight like that. So that was a better performance than I would expected there. Just because like Dragapult, it's tricky for Dragapult, but it's pretty, it's not good. I mean, I don't know. I, I feel like. So I don't, I don't play, you know, too much crystal or against it. And as well, I'm also, you know, we're not really like competitive players. We are, we play game, but we, you know, we're not like in, in tournaments very much, but we, you know, I mean, it depends. Like, I mean some, some decks have some ways to deal with it, but I don't know, it's, it's not, it's not very good. I'm trying to think, like, let me look at like the winning list here. And you got, I don't know, not, not much, to be honest. You have like Drake Log, which like, it's not like you instantly lose, but more like you probably just lose. Yu-Gi-Oh The one person did lose to. Did they lose to the tournament winner? Yes, the one person, the one person playing Crustal lost to Alakazam, which that eat that. That you'd expect. And the one person did lose to the world champion. So I don't, I don't know how that game went. So. Because it, I, I, It's a tough, it's a tough way to go because you're having to smack with Drake Loke probably multiple times. Yu-Gi-Oh you got Monkey Dory. You're probably pretty reliant on Monkey Dory. Yu-Gi-Oh maybe, maybe some hammer slips as well. Oh, that's right. Four hammers. Yu-Gi-Oh Okay. So Yu-Gi-Oh that, that's, that's a card that we don't need to make better. Right. We don't need Crushing Hammer to be. Although honestly, if you made, if you made Crushing Hammer just you discarding energy, it would make it much better. But you get rid of the coin flip and I would probably be happier with it in the game. Yu-Gi-Oh So, Yu-Gi-Oh original engine removal. Yu-Gi-Oh So that actually, that's, that's one-of-one unfortunate that Crushing Hammer was in the championship deck. I will say to me. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I think, you know, it is. We could be. There are different things you can analyze with it and like, why it can be good in tournaments and whatever. But Yu-Gi-Oh it's, it's not a fun card. I, I, Yu-Gi-Oh but anyways, speaking of fun cards, we spent a bunch of time talking about a bunch of different decks here. But in terms of if you, I'll, I guess steal your spotlight, what you're going to say here. But if you look at like play Limitless. Side note, we were looking at this right before the podcast. There's some really wacky stuff going on with wailord on Play Limitless. Like, it doesn't seem like it's working right and it's like being split into two different decks. Not sure what's going on there. If anyone knows, I guess tell us. But regardless, looking at the, you know, decks that see some play, not tons of play, but some play sorting by the 1 to the lowest one-of-one rate, we see a bunch of Megas, we see Mega Charizard X, we see Mega Bombasnow, we are Goldin we see Mega Dark Cry, you see Mega Frost sl, which I'm not exactly sure what Mega Frostless is as well as Frost Mikey Door, again, not sure exactly what that is as a deck. Yu-Gi-Oh there's Mega Ninja, there's Whaler, there's Mega Manectric. I'll just say two more Duo Blade, and then Mega Chandelure there. Obviously this is a good chunk of decks. They're not all like Zebra terrible. And the sample size is small. But I mean, you know, I think these decks are pretty clearly not that good. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, as we get towards, quote, the best of those decks, mega chandelier, like 43, which that's not terrible, but the bottom ones are in like Mega Charizard x is like 33 one-of-one rate. And you know, honestly, Mega Charizard is. Their Mega Charizards just are not good cards. Yu-Gi-Oh Honestly, like, 33 is probably high. Almost feels like higher than it should be. Yu-Gi-Oh And one of the things is what I've seen when you go through the decks and one-of-one rates, the ones with the really bad one-of-one rates are the Megas, for the most part, I would say. And I think part of that is people like to try out the Megas, which, you know, so people probably know that the Megas aren't very good, but they want to try it out. And like, if you're a big Charizard fan, so it's a Mega Charizard, you got to build it. And then. And then, because online tournaments are easy to get it jump into, people will play it, even at times not expecting much from it. So therefore, I think that's why things skew towards the Megas getting such bad results. Yu-Gi-Oh I also think there are people that think that Megas are just really good. Like, I get comments, okay. Some like that people are like this. Like, these Megas are like, Zebra good. And like, they're like, oh, Yu-Gi-Oh you can just do, like, so much damage. And it's like, well, Yu-Gi-Oh but it's like, I didn't look at these Megas. I was gonna say they're evolutions. The top three are all different stages, so. But there are a lot of resources to set up. We'll talk about. I mean, you know, in terms of cards that I think haven't quite gotten as much support as they need, I think Mega Dark Ride is probably one of those. It is a basic. It's, you know, the star of the set. Same thing with Meg Charizard X ex. And then these cards, like, there's so many resources to set up, and they also give up three prizes. You know, with the rotation of Dragon Blue Ice you're saying, maybe we'll see these Megas be good. Pokemon has kind of reverse power. Creep is, you know, that's been a big, like, talking point. I don't think it's good. I mean, I don't. I don't think that's a good thing for the game. Long story short. But, you know, maybe we will see these cards be good. I'm somewhat skeptical on. I mean, you know, some of these unless we, you know, see new. New support for them. I mean, honestly, the rotation, I do think we're going to probably see still that the two prices probably be good. The ones that ever are remaining. Yu-Gi-Oh Okay. Yu-Gi-Oh Well, I'm also looking here at the adjusted one-of-one rate right now and Alakazam has the highest one-of-one rate. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh And some single price as well. And that's not rotating. Right. And I don't know that it's losing anything. I mean it's just losing the Dunspress. Right. I think. Oh, so that's going to be tricky. I'm, I don't love it on Spurs. I mean it's pretty in the deck, but no, you can get around. I mean, I know, I don't know if we did it in the podcast and if, if you played the deck, I apologize, but, but we've kind of laughed about playing the Toucanon with the, the with Alakazam because I think I've come around on it. I think because of. Oh, I mean you look at like, like crustle or something. You know, Al Kazam has like 10 billion counters so. And playing something that just doesn't get like countered. I don't know, I can see it making a more balanced deck. Well, and what I was going to say is even if, even if it's not the best way to play it now and I, I, I, I think it has more I, I and you sounds like you think it has more peel, not too post rotation, certainly to Cannon Alakazam may be the way to go with it now. It, maybe it is, maybe it's not, but I think up against the Megas, my point is a single Prizm deck like Alakazam potentially can one shot. It can certainly two shot it. So I don't think life for Megas is going to get that much better post rotation. But we'll see. Yu-Gi-Oh And you know, ultimately, Yu-Gi-Oh we will see there. So I'm looking at the highest one right decks and most of my, most of them are irritating. But then you know, looking at like, I guess Mega Charizard X, let's like glance at the deck and again you have like all these pieces. Why is it Fleer Blaziken? I guess Blaze Can EX is like good but you know, it's, Yu-Gi-Oh it's almost kind of reminds me of 2k and Alakazam. Not the same thing but like you have this like safer option, this more aggressive option that has theoretically higher upside but also it's riskier but like Blaze can the AX is like pretty decent. And then I mean Mega Charge on the X with the Orchard ex, which is if you don't know, you just get a bunch of energy and like do a bunch of damage and stuff. Right? It's pretty simple. It's I guess. Okay. And Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know. I mean, I don't have too much to say about this deck, to be honest. No, I, Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, the Blaziken's a bit odd, I guess. It's, it, it changes the Prizm map. Right. So rather than chatting with three prizer, you can attack with a two prizer and obviously try to force your opponent to take seven or eight prizes, which, which is good. Right. Obviously, your opponent may boss for game at the end, but it forces them to have that to make that happen. So. But Yu-Gi-Oh the Blaziken's a little odd. The Mega Charizard X, and there's a Mega Charizard Y as well. I, I honestly don't remember what that one does either, but that one's, that was a sniper. But they're honestly very similar. Okay. Yu-Gi-Oh So 360 hp, which is, which is a good number, certainly, but it's, it's, you know, for the Megas, that, that's, I don't know it's anything crazy. It does 90 for two energies. You discard fire energy from your Pokemon any way you want. Does 90 per. So, you know, we have the Oricorio, so it should in theory work, but, you know, it's a stage two relying on rare candy and such, so it just gets tough. Also, for some of these, these ones with energy based like this, the fact that we lost superior energy retrieval hurts those as well. Right. So if you want to see those decks do better, you could say, you know, reprint superior energy retrieval. I would think it would make a deck like this better and you probably would just drop the Blaziken at that point. I, I, I'm not sure. Yu-Gi-Oh maybe. And then also I do want to say that like a card, to me, that stands out as being like a card that is not very good. And I mean, it's not like the reason this deck is bad, but it's a card that is kind of in a similar vein to the Mega Charizard, where it's like very all in, very kind of aggressive, but almost like overly so. Where it has like this massive downside, or maybe the upside isn't what you're really looking at, like expecting. And that's fire breather here, I think. Fire breather, you search for nine or, sorry, you search for seven basic fire energy. And ultimately that is like, cool. But I mean, one, you don't need seven energies to take the knockout. Sure. Extras are nice and so you probably have seven energies in your deck. So this card at face value looks kind of cool, but, you know, it's definitely a card that looks at face value like it is. And, you know, this is another card kind of like a lot of the megas where people were kind of really hyping these cards up because they look really big. But in practicality, it's just searching a handful of energies. It's okay, but it's not. I mean, it's not very good. It's very mediocre. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh As soon as you started saying there was a card, another card in this list you didn't like, I clicked on Fire Breather because I knew that's where you're going there. And Yu-Gi-Oh it's. And look, I'm someone that back in the tag team days liked the fire package, but there was a lot of good fire support. Right. So this in essentially, it kind of brings you back to those days, but there were items and stadiums and poke. You just had a whole world of things that made fire decks work. Here you have this one supporter that, you know, if I was playing what. I'm trying to remember what it was, the, the single Prizm fire guy, right? This, this. Maybe it slapped this in because all of a sudden, bam. And I'm just blowing you up because that, that, that's one way to make it work. But a deck like this, you're only playing eight basic energies. It only recovers the basic. Only gets the basic energy. So unless you can use it like you're really early in the game, you're not getting that much value out of it. And if you use it, turn one, you. You need another supporter to set up because you're a stage two attacking deck. So you're not using it probably until you have probably five or less energies in deck as well. So the value isn't as good. But of course, we don't have earthen vessel, Right. So we don't have great energy search items in, in the format now. So it does, I guess a deck like this, I can see a place for it, but it's not great either. Yu-Gi-Oh And you know, you're talking about the older fire package of the, the like late or the, the tag team era, with like Vershazzard being like the, I guess, the attacker there. And with that, the reason that package was good, I mean, you looked at, you know, Fire Breather here in standard is this card that is pretty hit or miss, but its upside is mediocre. And downside, it pretty much doesn't really do anything. Right. I guess, theoretically Its upside is pretty good. Like this star is aligned, but it's not that good. And then with the. The old. The I'll just call the umbrella bonds fire package. The Italian fire package had welder that was, you know, that directly had not Zebra like this downside. It was. Or it's. Its Fleer was pretty bad, but its ceiling was really good. And it was like. Like legitimately amazing. Making it, you know, just one of the best supporters ever, honestly. And then you look at the other pieces in there. There was like fire crystal. There was. There was the giant heart. There were a bunch of pieces that were pretty decent and they were all right. You need them all to work with each other versus the Mega Charizard deck. Pretty much. You're decking only kind of start functioning once you have all the pieces. And the pieces don't really set you up. So you don't really. I don't know, you don't really have a great starting point. Theoretically if you get to the end, it is good, but it's just hard to get there and you don't have these more clean, safe support options. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean the good thing is water is not great now so that the weakness is not your big problem. Which. Which is good. But Yu-Gi-Oh the deck's slow to get going. So it probably to make this work you would. I would think you'd need some early game attacking option, which I don't. I guess you have the heat more. I guess that's your setup attack which accelerates three energies. And then now it searches for. No, it's like Celebi or. Oh, they go to your. Yu-Gi-Oh So as long as your Oricora doesn't get knocked out, you're okay after that. You know, would you. Would it be better off with playing Badoo or something just to slow them down? I. You know, I. I don't know. It's. It's. It's. Yu-Gi-Oh You really need all the stars to align with this deck. I would say to work you really have to want to play a fire deck to want to give something like this a try. And I just don't think there's the pieces to really make a deck like this go. Yu-Gi-Oh Really at kind of all levels of it. Looking at other megas you look at. I guess let's look at Mega Vomit Snow next. This deck is really. Sorry this second so short it. You know, it's one of these Pokemon where you, you know, want to like just go to a bunch of cards on top of your deck and do damage based on it. So you have, like a bunch of water energies here. This list runs 38. It doesn't even, like, show up right. In Limitless. And it's only got two lines of tax and or sorry of cards. And so it's very simple. And that's, you know, I think Mega Charizard kind of falls in this category, but also, especially something like this, people play them because it's silly and it's fun, not because it's good. Right. And if a deck like this was good, I don't know if it'd be as fun anymore. I talked about this in a recent video, talking about coin flips in the Pokemon tcg where there are these decks we flip lots of coins. And they are fun, but they're kind of fun because in some ways they're not Zebra good as well. I think if they're Zebra good, there would be a bunch of frustration. Frustration. But there's not, because they're not that good if you lose to them. Like, if they pop off, the deck's like, okay, maybe a little quote unquote overpowered. If it, like, gets lucky. But not. Not crazy. And then, you know, but the time, it one-of-one really do very much. Yu-Gi-Oh And honestly, as I look this list and I get why. As I hold it up myself, I get why you laughed at it. It's got. Got 3, 6, 7, what, like 10 different cards in the deck? Something like that. Yu-Gi-Oh It also plays Larry's skill, which is like, okay, but it's not. It's not that good. And it plays dawn as well, which is. See, See, I keep telling you, Dawn's so great. You don't need stage twos. And dawn is still a keeper in every deck. I know. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, like, I. I've seen dawn in megabomasnow for a while. Like, you know, you probably haven't looked at many megabomb Stone list, right? Or no, No, I don't know if I've done it before. Yu-Gi-Oh So this is more or less what they look like, I'm pretty sure. I mean, okay, it's mostly water emojis. Right. But Yu-Gi-Oh in terms of, you know, there's dawn in some. And I was like, dawn's so bad. But then I was like. I think I tried a little. I was like, stone's okay, but it doesn't feel good because as you're saying, there's no stage issues in the deck. Right. Which feels pretty rough, I'm not gonna lie. And so, like, the support isn't even that Good in the deck. But obviously the issue with the deck is the fact that your hand's gonna be like all energies. Like if you're a new player to the Pokemon TCG playing, maybe that's formal, like theme, maybe even prelistic. This can happen where you just get like so many energies in your hand. You can't really do anything. That shouldn't really happen with good decks very often though. But with, with something like this, yep, it'll be happening a lot. And you one-of-one really have options. Well, and there's. I, I really have some concerns with how this deck will set up. And obviously it doesn't one-of-one much. It's a deck that I. A type of deck that it's just a fun kind of stupid deck I get. So it's appealing deck to me. You do a bit damage based on the. On discarding energies. Then you got the kyogre that for one energy does 20 for each water in the energy, the discompile and shuffles them back in. So you got that. But it's got the problem which, which some of these other decks I imagine face. Well, this one has a lot of. Is that Pokemon Search. You have Dawn. You probably should have the other supporter, right? That. That's the one you'd play, right? That does two basics or one Evolution. I'd probably play Brocks. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know. I think dawn might technically be better. Yu-Gi-Oh it feels really bad. But this deck needs it. It's lacking Pokemon Search. It only plays one Pokemon Search trainer, one Ultra Ball, because. Right. This deck plays Layer Skill, Larry skill. That, that's true. Yu-Gi-Oh But it gets you one. So. But in terms of items, right. It really needs obviously Nest ball or quick ball. It also really needs it. And Also the basics are 90 for the snover, 150 for the kyogre. So you can't use Buddy Buddy Poffin. You could play Pokey Pad, I guess to help set up. But I, I, you know, the lack of item cards to get your Pokemon to Blue Ice a problem. But I'm also concerned of powering up, I gotta say, because it's two energies for, for the. The Mega abomasnow, you can't use dawn in the deck. I might actually, I might try a deck where I'd put. Wait, you mean what you can't play. Sorry, you can't play Crispin. Crispin. Right. I might actually try a couple like, other energies in a Crispin. Because you. No, because you might be able to, you know, as long as you have Another one. And water energy in hand, which you probably do because you play infinite, what water energies. You kind of need to power it up in one turn. You can't. And it doesn't play heavy baton. Right. That's still in format, right? It's got. Yu-Gi-Oh So their tree cost is 4. Because I'm trying to. I'm also concerned I can't stream attacks here, and that's a big problem as well. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, if you don't get one shot, it should be okay, I guess. I don't know. I mean. Yu-Gi-Oh Actually having baton probably would be really good. I'm not gonna lie. Because you have secret box. Right. As well. And, like, they didn't play any tools. And like, heavy batons, One heavy baton is gonna be pretty consistently good. A deck like this, you want to make sure that the cards are drawing, I guess, are good most of the time. And getting like, one card is getting you most of the way there, I guess. I mean, honestly, the deck's just. It's really bad. But Yu-Gi-Oh everything you can pop off and just like, obliterate your opponent if they'd like. Honestly, it could be dragon. Dragon's kind of slow. It is possible, but. Well, Yu-Gi-Oh you're not really doing too much. No, I think a deck like this is. You get that attack every couple games where you're doing, or so often where you do five or six hundred damage in one turn. One. One turn. And therefore, that little. You. You get a little buzz from that, and that keeps you going through all the games you're losing. I think that's what. That's what this kind of deck is like. I will say. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh it's definitely like, they're kind of fun. They're very silly. We're talking about some of these decks and how they could be better, I guess. And, you know, you. We more or less know how this better. I mean, it's true with any deck. Just make its stats better. And they. They could do that, right? They can make it One Energy. They can make it. They make it One Energy. We've seen Pokemon like this that are single prizes with one Energy. We still need to reset them. And then Ultra prizes are going to be multi. Multiple Energy. I think from what I've seen with these styles of Pokemon, so, you know, they could compete in the middle, and then the multiprises that are single Energy make them just pretty. Pretty decent that way. You know, then they. They'd be good, and then they wouldn't be as fun. Yu-Gi-Oh Or you could. You could make it a Mega for two, but make it, say, a basic. So then you. It sets up a little easier that way, too. Yu-Gi-Oh it needs something to help. Help it work. Or, you know, another, you know, a good secondary attacker. Right. That you can attack with, preferably for one, energy, some ex. Right. That. That can. That can help get. Get things going. So, you know, take a Prizm Soften up a big Pokemon. It needs something to help it, which I don't think the game really has right now. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh These actually really don't have depth, which is. I don't know, it's kind of the design. Right. I think with Mega Charger, you also don't really have that much depth. You have a little more. Okay, you have a bunch more. Right. Let's be honest. But it's still not, you know, anything particularly crazy. And it leaves a lot of decks just in this kind of mediocre territory or, like, bad to mediocre territory. And not as, like, exciting either. You need to kind of figure out things to get the deck to work. I mean, I'll mention one of my favorite decks, which is Slowbro, where, you know, it's kind of. This is pretty bad, but figuring out how it can work is really fun. But it's like. It's a puzzle. It's a puzzle to build. It's a puzzle to play, and that's what makes it fun. If it was a little better, would I like it more? Yu-Gi-Oh I think if it had more options to work with, I'd like it more. But, Yu-Gi-Oh in some ways, these decks being kind of weird out there, it makes them cool, you know? Dragon Ball Ex. There are puzzles with Dragon Ball Ex, puzzles with playing it. They're puzzles with building it. And it's very good, right? Like, it's very good. Yu-Gi-Oh because the. If you fail the puzzle, you're in an okay spot. And if you, like, make the right decision, you're in a really good spot. I mean, theoretically, if you make, like, all the wrong decisions, then you could just not be able to do anything. But, like, if you, like, fail all your buddy Baby Poppins or something stupid like that. But Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Now I look at the. This number two list here. This is. This is a list that's a much more interesting list. It only has 28 energies, so therefore, you get that more deck space. Obviously, only 28 is absurd statement, but it does get to play something like Great Hall Net, which is, you know, good for a water deck, and then gets to play one of your favorite Pokemon in the Game my goat, Cinderace. So in any deck that can play Cinderace, because they only play 2 actually of the Snovers so that they can get the Cinderace going. So now you have a way to power up because Cinderace fire Pokemon. But it's any type of energy to attack with and accelerates any type of energy. Energy. So the deck actually just seems like it has a little more promise and it plays your other. Your number two favorite card. That's 06 Machinations. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Why is this like a nation? That doesn't make any sense of the deck. I don't know. And they're playing redeemable ticket too, which I don't think you could like Prizm If you Prizm Snover. I guess. Yu-Gi-Oh I guess maybe that's why. Yu-Gi-Oh If they're both prized, obviously, then you're in a lot of trouble. Yu-Gi-Oh Well, if they're both prizes, you probably find that when you use your Ultra ball though. So Yu-Gi-Oh it's. I think if one's Prizm If they're both prizes, you probably lose, which is possible because you can start generation. You can Prizm both. I'm still like. I mean technically. Yes. Or is it's gonna be used against Alex Zam and Alexander probably is a bad matchup and Joseph does help it. But don't play 06 in there. No. And honestly, I personally did. I've tried 06 against Alexam, but I also found that to me, 106 isn't enough to one-of-one the game against Alakazam. And you don't want to put multiples of roasts and usually you can't afford that because it just makes the deck less consistent. So it probably. I. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't get the 06, I gotta say. Yu-Gi-Oh Even one 06 is. Oh, I'm sorry. I will mention. I assume this is probably open deck list. So theoretically playing hand disruption can be useful in open deckless tournaments. Yu-Gi-Oh Wait, this doesn't play an aspect. I just realized it probably should. Oh, I will say this. Against Alakazam decks. I think play judge that. That's my advice. Play judge. Because it actually can help you out as well. Yu-Gi-Oh Judge is like a decent card. It's not a Zebra good card, but it's, you know, it's a top 10 supporter. Yu-Gi-Oh And then we got. I don't have too much more to say on. On Mega AbomasNow. No, no. I think that you said more than. Than his generally been said in the past. And it was good. I'm glad you brought that one up, though. Yu-Gi-Oh So let's talk about the third Mega here. Mega Darkrai. Then we. We'll jump back to. I guess we're kind of going in order here. I don't know if we're going in the same order, but there's our Goldin I'll mention briefly. 1. Don't play. Like some of the builds here I just don't think are Zebra good, personally. But you know, play. Play whatever build you want. You know, I love Cinderace, but I don't think Cinderace makes very much sense at all with our Goldin I do love Explorer's guidance, though. I love Explorer's guys. I love Cinderace. Awesome cards. But when those cards is just very good. Right. But regardless. So our Goldin fine. It's not very. I know. Unlike the other Pokemon here, it's not very splashy. Right. It's not very calm. I mean, it's like. I don't know. It's pretty generically decent. It's kind of how I describe the card. People just aren't playing it right. Like, I think there are a bunch of decks that are generically okay. And Carlos is one of those decks and. But it's just one. People aren't really playing very much. And some people are playing. Are trying to get more like fancy with it, which is fine enough. But it's. It's not like. I don't think it's terrible. Right? No, I mean, our Caliban's actually. It's a good card. Right. I mean, I wouldn't like if like one of the things is what cards aren't good enough and how you can make it better. I don't think you could make it better and still be it. Because it's a very fair card. I don't think it should get right. 300 HP on a stage one. Very good there. It's a. It's a stage one that only gives up two prizes. So it's not a mega. So that's very good. 220. That's pretty good for three. It's not great. I will give you that. But it. You remove the weakness. So that that's a plus the benefit. And then the ability. Right. You accelerate on play. Sorry. Two basic metal energies. The discard pile. Very, very. You know, just a really nice card. I would say so. And then you've got get the parrot with Relicant there. So what else could you want there? Yu-Gi-Oh well, I mean, with the bell again, for the previous evolution, they also have other architects as well. Which is pretty cool. So you have, like, versatility, you have some depth, you have some solid, like, base potential. Yes. So you need to get stuff in the discard, which is moderately difficult, but it's not like that. I mean, if it was really hard, we'd see mostly listening Prizm Tower, I think. So. You know, I mean, the deck works decently. It's not Zebra impressive, but it's. It's decent. And, you know, overall, I mean, it's fine, but it's also not Zebra interesting there. Right? I wouldn't say. I'd say Arcaladon is just okay. It's a little boring. It's not like, terribly boring, but it's not splashy like some of these big megas or some of the decks people really enjoy. No, you're right. I honestly, I'm surprised that it. The one-of-one rate's not a little better because it isn't a deck that is a pick that people are going to gravitate towards. So you. I think people that are playing it should play it because they want to play it, but also because they think they can do well with it. It's a deck that I think in some ways I would like more than you. It plays. Gets to play a card like this list plays. You get to play Jumbo ice cream, which I always like that. That's always fun there. Healing, heal. You know, healing. Because you're tanky. You're healing. Get handheld fan, some of those annoying cars like that full heroes cape as well. So going with the tanky, tanky way to go. Now, I will say from. I like tanky decks. It's. And I'm not alone in that. But I also will say Tanki decks tend to underperform too. Right. They have more promise than they actually deliver on. Right. It's like, oh, I'm so big, I one-of-one get knocked out. Well, you know, people tend to find ways to work around it. You do get knocked out, unfortun. Virtually more than you'd like. Right. And as well as it's playing Full Metal Lab, so it's really leaning into this whole tank healing aspect. But, you know, you can get one shot as well, and that. That is a problem. Yu-Gi-Oh you get one shot. You can miss your healing. You can. You can miss your. Your tankiness, whatever. You can also, you'll probably still get two shot even with the healing. So, I mean, you know, possibly. And this will happen from time to time. You'll have these games where, you know, Talking about Mega AbomasNow, you get these like crazy damage. This is like you'll get this crazy tankiness in some game. Just like obliterate someone, shut them out, really make it so they can't do much of anything. And Yu-Gi-Oh I mean that can happen, but that's more like, I mean, you know, these are kind of, I guess these one-of-one more cards where if you're already winning you're gonna, you know, still apply like more pressure, which is okay. But you know if you're already winning, you're probably gonna one-of-one It depends, you know. But it's definitely the cards are fun and have interesting upside but generally aren't very much worth it. You know, what car, what the like vaccine need. I mean you look at this deck and what it doesn't have is really a draw engine. Yes. We see pokey gear here which I'm sure you'll like. But they have draw supporters which I is good. I think draw supporters is good, but it's not, you know, I think with a good attack ideally you have a bunch of draw supporters, a bunch of item Pokemon Search and a good draw engine. And you want all those things that'll keep you where you want to be throughout the game. And really with the most we've been looking at here, they don't play dunes. Part of it is certainly a room. Some decks just want to, you know, play a little more risky and aggressive and have a little more fun in the those like really high rolly games. And that means that there's a lot of games where you're just kind of not doing too much. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean look, they get to throw in some fun cards which is probably part of the pillows deck. I, I like poke gear 3.0. I feel it's not a great card, but if you're not going to play an engine, run that. So they're playing three in this list. I, you know, maybe you got to put a fourth in just to try to get going. They're playing one of your good, one of your favorite setup supporters and Explorers guidance which makes sense with the deck as well. And then they're playing a really fun kind of support quote support Pokemon and Relicanth. Right. With Memory Dive that lets you copy your basic because the Arcaladon line is actually very good. Right. Our Carolina, like I said, has good stats. The, the Duralodon, the basic it evolves from has the Raging hammer which does 80 plus 10 mil, 10 more for each damage counter. So with Relicanth you could do big damage. It's 300 hp. You can have heavy Cape attached. So then you're really swinging for big things multiple times potentially. And then it has two single Prizm Archaladons ones that gives you free retreat and the other one that walls off basic. So it, it's a nice little package there. I think what the deck really needs and, and they're playing for Cinderace. I, I, I don't. It's, it's a nice setup. I don't know if that's really what the deck needs. I will say though, it needs probably another secondary. It needs an alt attacking option is what I think for damage. Right. Which is not the cinder. Cinderace is a setup attack. It really needs probably especially if you go go second or first. You go second. Right. You need an attack to kind of get things going. Either do some damage or something like that. Just to kind of, you know, maybe a basic ex that you can attack with turn one. I don't know. Something like that would be good for a deck like this. Yu-Gi-Oh And you know, like you were saying a tank turn one. Right. You could be running some of the mega, the metal basics which are good. Mega Mawa. I will say it's probably actually pretty good in a deck like this. And then you know, Mega Scarborough is interesting as well. But they are like once you've got your account on setup, then you could use them. I'm looking at the second list here on Limitlessness. It plays ends or he acts as like an engine. It gets sent you the discard. So it's a cool enough I guess, but you know, it's not crazy impressive. And then you know, you don't see, okay, you see crystal cameras, but you don't see as many tech cards in this deck here. Or sorry, you don't see like the same Topps of tech cards in the deck. And also then if you're playing this stack, I mean honestly, when I look at it, it seems like it plays kind of like Dragapult without some of the upside. I mean, yes, Dragapult does like a lot of like a lot of different things. So you could argue that probably like after decks of the game are just like a worse versus a Dragon Ball in some ways missing certain options. This one doesn't have the spread it has to split its engine between or it's it's attack between an engine between two different lines and it started a search and whatever. You know, Dragon bolts are good. But Yu-Gi-Oh I think the deck just doesn't have this very strong identity in terms of like a starting place. I mean, you know, it has a Decent attacking line with some utility as we were talking about. Right. It doesn't have the consistency. Right. The consistent consistency is really important in the Pokemon industry. And Yu-Gi-Oh currently standard supporters aren't Zebra good other than lilies which is good and that or draw supporters supporters. And then items are good. Items are good in standard right now like binding search, ball search, whatever. But you know, you are looking for an engine and you're looking for an engine that works well with your attacker. Yu-Gi-Oh The third place list actually starts to get more interesting, I would say. I don't know if it's a better list. It, it, it plays, it has a dun sparse engine which we've said, you know, I like it more than you. But then it also then plays fan rotom to help you get set up. And then you could attack your first turn going second with it. And, and they're also playing scoop up Cyclone for the as back instead of the heroes cape, which that might be the better way to go with with this deck. It's an interesting thought there. I, I will say. Yu-Gi-Oh And as we do see like something like Scuba Cyclone I think is probably in my opinion the most fun a spec. It's versatile and it's just really cool. Scuba effects are Zebra fun. But also, you know, with these stacks and we see like tremors Bomb and I mean, honestly, even Relicanth is a bit techy. There's a lot of cards that are kind of weird tech cards that aren't Zebra good, to be honest. And I think when people are playing with some of, some of these weaker decks, people like to mess around a little more. Yu-Gi-Oh And it makes the decks look in some ways even worse. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh like, like, I mean I, I like Relicanth. It's a lot of fun. But how often do you actually get the benefit of Relicanth per se and Mega Mawile? It's in the decade. You can say it has a place. But again, if you like drop that Relicanth, you lose a little bit. But maybe you can pick up some consistency the way you build the deck. Right. So those are some of the trade offs you make. Right. With these decks to just simplify them a little bit in. Some of these decks will do better. And these decks aren't played by a lot of people. So the lists are not optimized. Which is what, you know, getting back some of the earliest earlier conversations, that's part of the problem. These decks aren't played much so you know, they're not built as well as they could be. For the most part. Yu-Gi-Oh Moving on to Mecha Darker I think is interesting. This is new and. Okay. I actually didn't really. I didn't look at the list going into this. But with Mega Darkrai, the first list is like a basic box style deck. The second one also is. I don't know if basic box style deck, but it's like all basics. Setting up the second attack, I think, and not really the first one. And again, this is kind of going into. Because Mega Dark Ride, the first attack is just this kind of generic, just damaging attack, which is okay. The second attack is. I will say the. The first attack in Mega or in Toxicity box is interesting. But then the second attack is interesting. Take an instant knockout. If your point's active by affected by a special condition which you can use inflict using Dark Bell or Volcano Ex, which you see in this list. That's okay. But then also. Well, I don't know, theoretically, like taking instant knockouts. Good. But you need three basic energies here. That's hard to do. Yu-Gi-Oh You have Gene Secretary energy switch, which makes it doable. I know. There's like so much switch in this deck. Oh, I guess it's for me at Kangaskhan. So you can like, like Latias in the Mega Kangaskhan and Pec run into your Mega Darkrai. Okay. Which is like cool, I guess, but I don't know. This is a thing in. In megapixel box. But I don't. I never loved it. And clearly, I mean, you know, people aren't playing the deck anymore. Obviously there's rotation, but it's not just rotation because all the attackers are still in format. But regardless. So the deck is. The. The upside is mediocre. Right. I mean, I guess it's instant knockout, but it's. It's. Realistically, this text just isn't that good. It's like new. It's just kind of why people are playing, I think. Yu-Gi-Oh And big basic decks are appealing. And look, I. I enjoyed playing Roaring Moon Ex. I don't think you liked it as much as I did. And that had the second attack that. That also would just knock out your opponent's active Pokemon. It didn't have the. The contingency, the special condition, but you damaged yourself. And I think. Was that three energies as well, or was that two? Yu-Gi-Oh it was three. It was three energies. One was Carlos. So it gave you more options in terms of other things in the deck. And then also it did have a first stack that was decent. Yes. Probably a little better. Than Mega Dark Rise. And the deck just flowed smoother. Yu-Gi-Oh it was better. And we had Dark patch and format as well, which meant you powered up much easier. We do have, what, Toxicity around right now, which. Which, Yu-Gi-Oh decks that feature Toxicity. I don't know if we'll get to that, but they're. They're very underwhelming decks as well, I would say. So, Yu-Gi-Oh It's the big, basic boxes. Latias is a tremendous card. Make a Kangaskhan tremendous card. You know, Blood Moon or Ser Luna. Pheasantipity. So these big basics are very good. So you. I understand that the appeal of trying out these other big basics. Darkrai, I. You know, I would say just isn't the way to go, though. Yu-Gi-Oh It reminds me of what's happening to the Mega Rayquaza deck, where I know people are really hyping this deck up. Funnily enough there, it's actually kind of similar with the fact that they're both the main card in their set. And I think everything in the Mega Request is. Deck's really good, except for Mega Rayquaza. It's actually a bunch of similar pieces. You have, like, the interesting basic, like, lineup there. And these cars are good in some ways. They can kind of COVID up and make Mega Darkrai appear better and can. Which is cool as well, too, because it's fun to play. But also, you know, I mean, something like Toxtricity, I feel like, is more. You know, we talked about Toxicity a little with, you know, Mega Sharpedo. That's one of the main ways to play it. And it's like, more safe, more. I don't know. I mean, more synergistic. Mega Darkrai. There's not that much synergy between it and the other cards in the deck. And the cards are mostly good. And, like, Volcanian has synergy, and some cards have some synergy with Volcanion. But for the most part, Mega Darkrai is kind of just there. And it's like everything else is pushing Mario Darkrai up bigger. Dark Ride is just too long for their ad. Yu-Gi-Oh it's kind of like we've. We've talked about it times in the past. Like, these days, you can put something or drag a pult, and it can be a good deck. But then it's like, just play Dragapult or back in the days with Arceus V Star. And you compare Arcus V Star with, like, pretty much any other V. Pokemon in the game and. And one-of-one games with it. But, you know, it really was Just it was. Arceus was the star. Right. So you could have Arceus V Star with some absurd other like vmax card and could one-of-one with it. But really, you know you're fooling yourself when you think the other card was actually that good. Yu-Gi-Oh Like Agron Vmax, which was. It was 3 Energy 150 and mill 1, which isn't very good. Or 5 Energy 27030 to itself. This card softly like a sarsh. Right. And people could one-of-one with some of these. There was like. Like. Like the Kyurem. Right. Kirum Vmax and stuff like that Right here was okay with Palkia. Yu-Gi-Oh it was. But. But early on, I think I played it with Archeus some two before Talc. Maybe I did not because I don't know if I actually had the cards because that was bad. Is actually one of the last vmaxes released. Oh, okay. All right. Which is weird. Yu-Gi-Oh So. But. But you know, there were a bunch of decks Arceus plus something. And it really was just Arceus. Right. So. And I think that Mega Darkrai falls in the same thing. It's getting. It's just Archeist. It's just Archeus deck. Exactly. But if. But if Mega Darkrai is getting just a lift from big basic box. If that's the case, it still one-of-one rates below 40%. That's a pretty bad sign for it, I'd say. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean it's like three Energy plus some other stuff. You can do some stuff. But it's not that good. But Yu-Gi-Oh What take you on to go. We've kind of gone through the list here, but what do you want to touch on now? See, is there Mega. Is there Mega Gengar listed here or not? Or is it Toxicity? I don't think it's. I honestly don't know. I'm not gonna lie. Hang on. I've got some. one-of-one I have some Mega. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I found it. Oh. When you separate it, only 14 people played it and it's got a 12% one-of-one rate. So. Yu-Gi-Oh So this is. one-of-one rate is really bad. But. But the ability. It's so appealing. I mean, maybe not to you, but I. I got. You know, it's one of these things you read the ability, shadowy concealment. You know, when one of your darkness Pokemon knocked out from damage opponent's attack. Oh. Only from the opponent's ex. Which is also a downside because we have things like Alakazam, but they take one less Prizm What's that? Yu-Gi-Oh Alexa wouldn't work anyways, he says that they affect the attack. Oh that's right. So things that place damage counters as well. You're right. So you have multiple ways around it but you still. Most of the time you're getting knocked out by damage in the active spot. So potentially it's really good. You can attack with Mega Gengar although its attack isn't very good. So you have this. It's a stage two. So it's a trap there. And then like this list you're pairing it with. Maybe look at the first place list. I don't know the top list. I mean I don't want Scolipede. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I. I have. Yu-Gi-Oh Once a Scolipede list which is its own problem. Right. Scolipede which is. Which is fun. But you damage them down to 10 and then you. You've got. What. What is it when they hit you, when you have spiritual play them, they get knocked out. I think is the idea. Which doesn't seem very good or it's. It's. It has way too many basic arrays. Got four Zebra tomb. It's got a three, two, three scolipede line and then you've got a two what. And you got a 212 mega gengar line. So that's a lot. Wait, too many basics or Pokemon? Too many Pokemon. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I guess just it's a lot of deck space. Right. Because you need the spirit too. You need a scullipede. You need the Mega Gengar. You've got to set up two stage twos to get going. You know it's. It's a lot of things to me. I need the energy too. So you need the toxicity. I guess we have toxicity. So you need to tricycity. So you need a stage one, two stage twos and a basic. And you want those set up all the time. Right. So we got Grimley, you know Grimsley's move which. Yu-Gi-Oh Anything that manipulates the bottom of the deck is. Is fun. It's the top of the deck. Oh the top. I'm sorry. Yu-Gi-Oh the top. I'm sorry, they go on the bottom after. Okay. I saw bottom that. That's why. So look at the top put. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh that might work for you. Hopefully if you get lucky they do play two hassle. So I'm Zebra Hyper about that because that's a. You know a card that I. I like but just I know is not good enough. So. Yu-Gi-Oh And it plays precious trolley for its a spec which is good for some decks. Right. You. You're a Bigger Precious Trolley fan than I am. And I, I need to. Am I. I think so. I'm. I'm a kind of like it, I'm a hater of it, but I, I actually will play it. But it actually is very good for certain things. Right. In some decks, I, I don't think a deck like this, we have all these evolution lines. I don't think Precious Trolley is what you need though, I gotta say. Just. I think you need something else for consistency. So the problem with this list, the Scolipede list, which I was going to bring up, it's just trying to. It's trying way too hard. Too many pieces. It's just not gonna work, I would say. Yu-Gi-Oh Which is on Limitless or Playlist, the top list, the second list is 0 and 5. Yu-Gi-Oh No, it's, it's a bad. It's a rough set of things, which is. I, I think this is the list he. The other lists are like Mega Gang. So Toxicity with Mega Gengar, which makes sense. Right? You're accelerating energies. Mega Gengar. You give up a less Prizm and then you can attack with. Well, the one list. What are they attacking? What they should be attacking with. You know, they got like a Mega Dark Rye, so you can attack with that as well. So. Which all makes sense. Right? I mean, I would say. Right. But it's just. Yu-Gi-Oh no, it does. Right. It's just. I mean, it's just not that good. Right? No, it's just again, it's even. It's simpler than the Scullope list, but it's still too many pieces and the attacks aren't good enough. You know, like it's got a. The one's got a Survivor, which just, you know, generally is not going to be good enough. He doesn't have. Is this the list with four friends in Paldea? Yes, it is. Which is that. That's the second place list, right. With no. Which is the 0 and 5 list. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know why I had second place, but it's. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean the third place let's place three wild is compassion. So I, I, you get what they're trying for. Although three Wallace. Compassion's a lot, you know, I would say, but I guess that's what you're going for. Leopard and Legacy energy as well. So really, you know, reducing the prizes and, and some fun stuff. It does have an engine to dunsparce, but it's just, I would say it's a deck. The third place list is at least as a logical list. I would say with the Gengar, the Toxicity, the Dunsparce Engine, the Walley's Compassion, but it's also trying, you know, again, it's just trying too hard. Right. That, that is one, one risk. Some of these, these decks to make it work, you just need too many things all to align perfectly to make the deck work. So you just, you're gonna fail more often than not. Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, sorry. I was looking at why the deck that went on 5 is ranked 72 out of like 140 or whatever. Yu-Gi-Oh It's because of some tournaments. Do they rank people who finish the event above or they don't rank the people who drop the event. Oh, so there's a bunch of people who are, you know, you got people are like 1 and 2, 2 and 2, 1 and 3. Oh, and oh, and 3. Whatever who've Tribute the event. Who's. I think 1 and. Oh. If I, I think I saw. Maybe not. But regardless, you know, you see it just being kind of weird and so it makes it look like the person did decently when they were kind of last. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Once people were out of it, they Tribute the, they Tribute out and got on with their life. But this person, they wanted to play their deck, so, you know, I mean, it's cool. So good for them. But. Yu-Gi-Oh so, so their, their ranking is. Is skewed because, because of that, though. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh But also I am the fact that the other day, the other standings aren't very good for the, for the deck. Yu-Gi-Oh no, it, it is. I mean, there's, Yu-Gi-Oh there's. What is. I don't know, 14 or so people. Not a lot. But only like, 4 of the people actually have one-of-one any games. So. Yu-Gi-Oh the first one, undefeated, they one-of-one a game they Tribute by the way, if you're not watching. Yu-Gi-Oh I see that one there. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I, I, So it plays Canary. You can't do anything. But I mean, this is honestly, this, the stats for this Mega Gengar are about as bad as you could get. Right. The fact that 14 people have tried this, that, that, that's just, that's a lot. I will. I would say. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I don't make a Giga is theoretically okay, to be honest. Like, I don't know. I'd say you could probably just play it with like, just Mega Gengar pretty much just like the only line and really get like, not fancy at all. And it's probably okay. Not Zebra good. I think about these lists are like, you know, really bad. I was gonna say New players. I mean, a new player wouldn't put Canary in their deck, though, right? Like, Canary doesn't do anything. I think this person's just kind of trolling. Maybe not. I don't know. I mean. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh they play Knockdown. They can't use Knockedowel. I don't know. I really don't have any explanation unless there's something weird going on here, but I don't think so. I mean, there's got to be something. Something's kind of weird with what they're doing, but, Yu-Gi-Oh definitely kind of weird to dive into some of this limitless stuff. Yu-Gi-Oh But look, I, but my point is Mega Gengar, it's. It's a very appealing card to me. Right. Giving up one less Prizm is like one of the best abilities around. Right. I mean, it's a great ability. I mean, maybe it's not, you know, I don't know where it stacks on things, but it's an all, you know, it's a great, great ability. And even if the stats on Mega Gengar aren't great, which they're not, you can obviously pair it with something. But part of it is there's nothing that good right now, obviously, if there's a. Is there a. You know, you need a good, A Solid Darkness basic rule box, Pokemon, probably, to pair it with attacker attackers. We have physiopity. Yu-Gi-Oh Right, Right. So an attacker and then, and then this could become good, and maybe it will get good before it rotates. I, I, I don't know what rotates this next year, by the way. I've lost track. Wait, specifically? Or, like, which letter is it? H? I think it's H. Yu-Gi-Oh Okay, let me double check. Yu-Gi-Oh that's what I was thinking. So I have another year of Mega Gengar, so maybe we'll get something with it. But even at that, with a good attacker, it's a stage two, and it gives up three prizes. It's gonna be tough, right, to make it work even with a really good attacking partner. Yu-Gi-Oh Honestly, going into this, because we didn't like Planet Zebra like, you know, a ton this episode that we are, you know, kind of thinking about, though, what cards would look like or, like what they need to look like for them to be better, in some ways, better designed. But honestly, most of these are okay. Like, they're not very good, but they're fun, right? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, a big part of it is probably they don't have good partners to go with it. That was what I'd say it Seems like we need probably if there are some better engines in the game, it would help because part of these, these don't. A lot of these decks don't have engines, but we, we don't have. I do, I really do feel like engines are a little down right now. So I, you know, I. Part of it is like I think the Dunsparce is one of the better engines in the game. You don't like it? I do think compared to some past engines, it's not that good. But engines are just a little. Are thin right now. So that's one thing. And then other partners attacking partners and stuff, we're just, we're just down on that right now. For a lot of these Topps I'd say. Yu-Gi-Oh it's definitely interesting to see what Pokemon will do. You mentioned with like rotation and I'm excited for that as well. I'm not as excited as some people are. I think some people think it's just going to quote unquote, save the game. I do think the game's at an okay spot right now. Know the drag pulled is very good and crushing hammers are annoying. But that's not like, you know, it's. It's not every deck or anything like that. So, you know, I'm interested in seeing what will happen with the rotation and if any of these will be good. But tell us in the comment section on our. On our YouTube channel's 10 Topps and Uncommon Fossil, what your thoughts are on these. If there's obviously any deck we talked about because there are tons that we didn't. And Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know if there's anything else you want to kind of shout out at the end. Any Pokemon you want to mention? No, I think we hit the ones I wanted to. But Yu-Gi-Oh just. If you have other cards that we could have brought up, there are other cards we could have. If you think there's something we should have, please let us know in the comments. And Yu-Gi-Oh thank you very much. Yu-Gi-Oh But we hope you all enjoyed. As always, we're excited to see you in the next episode. Take care.