This is not hell (Dragapult didn’t win)

Wahwan Generals. Welcome back to another week of what is. It's called the Shift Gear Podcast. I almost just started there for a sec. We're tired today, aren't we? A little bit. I just. It's 10:15pm I got back from Utrecht today, so for me, it feels like it's 4:15 in the morning. I was gonna say to make sure we get shift gear out this week. Yeah, that can't translate well. 10:15pm Eastern. Yeah. 4:15 in. In the Netherlands. How was. How was it out there? It was nice. I mean, I went almost a week. My mom actually came with me because her family or one of her friends from childhood lives in Amsterdam, so we stayed at her house for a few nights there, and I spent some time going around the city. I looked for your AirPod and you. I couldn't find it. Unfortunately. I don't have time to go to. Didn't have time to go to Morocco, so. Yeah. Still gone. Yeah, it's. Do you get anything stolen or were you smarter than me? I know I was good. I keep my phone in the front pocket. Yeah. Didn't record shift care while walking through the streets. Didn't record while walking through the streets. No. I can't believe that episode cost me 300 bucks. That was actually like. Like, it's a great story. I'm not. I'm not mad about it at all. I just, like, can't believe it happened. It was hilarious. Like, of all things, like, you guys wouldn't have believed me if I said, like, yo, I. I was on FaceTime or something. They'd be like, what the hell is wrong with you? But because I was on Shift Gear and I got my. My AirPod stolen, it was just incredible. And you know what? Worth. Definitely worth. Definitely worth the $10 in creator income we got off that thing. But, yeah, no, we had two regionals this weekend. I also just got back from a league challenge where I learned how good Festival Lead was. I wasn't really familiar with its game. Tbh. Not a lot of pull to that challenge, and I think that's why I was just kind of eaten up. But, yeah, I definitely learned that black belt works twice in a turn. I didn't know that. So I'm slowly starting to, you know, get acclimated to standard as IND approaches and I need to become slightly more serious. So we're learning. That's good. I was gonna say I've been. From the vibe I've been getting for me going to Cups and just from hearing people talk about Cups Is like Pulse meta share is not 30 at Cups and challenges, it feels like. No. People like to play all the other decks. Yeah. So which makes you think, like, I mean, I. I know, like, our local legend, Felix Wong, he's always playing Shadow Felix for real. That's bro. He's. He's playing, like, Dragon Ball everywhere and just dominating, like, every turn of it. Because he's, like, the only guy playing Dragon Ball. There's a lot of. Yeah, there's a lot of merit, I think, right now to playing Dragon Ball. Locals, it does seem like people are just very bored of it. They don't really want to play it, especially when they're going to locals. Like, tonight I played Greninja. Like, I'm sure next week I got another challenge tomorrow that I might go to. Like, I'll play, like, Ogre Mon or something. We're just playing stuff to play stuff because, like, everything kind of feels. I don't know. I don't know what the word is really, like, stagnant, I guess. Like, everything just kind of feels understood, if that makes any sense. I don't know. I haven't really felt a whole lot of creativity with this format. But a couple things we are learning. The Dunsparce can just be splashed into, like, everything. So that's a. That's a learning piece, as you can see from the. The deck that one here. And other decks can compete. I guess we're learning that too, like, very slowly. I think there's. I mean, like, everyone talks about this. Like, there's decks that beat Dragapult, like, have a favored. Favored matchup and they lose to everything else. And then there's, like, the group of decks that, like, they can beat Dragapult, they're slightly favored and, like, can beat other decks. So I guess stuff like Lawny, which ended up winning Utrecht. So it does feel like maybe the format's evolving a little bit. I still think, like, Dragonfold is, like, by far the best deck. I mean, like, even we had Lugia format. Like, Lugia didn't win every single tournament. But yeah, I think, you know, last week, Neil, we called the episode, like, are we in hell because of how much Dragonfold. I mean, maybe it's slightly better now since Dragonfall didn't win either tournament. There's some cool decks winning. There's a Honchkrow on top four, which we'll talk about too, in Utrecht. And then Hydrapple won the Brazilian regional, so, you know, it's getting a little better. I still think not amazing I mean, I didn't love the form. Yeah, you look at that screenshot, though. You look at what you got on the screen right now, it still looks like hell. That's the problem. Yeah, there was still a lot of Dragapult, so, yeah, it is the best. So, Mika, maybe we'll start in Utrechtrekt and then maybe we'll go over to Campina. I mean, I was actually in Utrecht, so I lost my win into top 16, which was very sad. I did play Dragapult. I didn't really want to, but it was one of those things where it's like, all right. Like, you know, like, I wasn't sure what deck to play. I'm like, I'm a pretty good player, so I should probably just play the best deck. So I just ended up playing Dragapult, and I was between this version or probably just playing, like, the hammer build. And I don't mean this in a negative way, but, like, EU is like, there's less serious stuff being played over there. So I was like, all right, let's play Dusknoir, deal with all this nonsense. The list, like, doesn't play candy. There's, like, dawn in it. So, like, it has some counter play for the mirror a little bit, you know, respecting it with that. And I did kind of miss the candies in some of my games, but in some games, I'm like, I didn't really need them. The Roses was a very good card. I have to give a shout out to Nick Germaine. He's the dragapult warrior or expert in my server. Everyone goes to him for help. So I took one of his lists. I think I changed, like, one card or something. The main thing I did was I played the Double Watchtower just because, like, I'm like, oh, well, like, Low Point did well in Los Angeles. I think more people play that Al Kazam. Like, the people have, like, figured out this, like, handheld fan builds. I'm like, all right, let's play that and then judge, try and, like, counteract that. I didn't really hit those decks, but that was kind of the thought process. And overall deck was good. If you look at my matchups, like, especially the first day, like, there was some, like, Mickey Mouse matchup. Not Mickey Mouse in, like, a bad way. Just, like, I was hitting just the most random stuff. Like, I'm hitting Honchkrow back to back. I was hitting two Starmies this round. I hit, like, Arboliva Decidueye, the villain deck. But this deck was actually, like, kind of scary. Bro. Yeah. What does that do? Pavilion is just judged as an ability or. No, it's not judged. Your opponent shuffles the hand in the bottom draw four. So we're like, sweet game two. I had to go second. And like, this guy on his second turn got Arboliva plus pavilion. So then like, he had my hand down to four and Arboliva online. And then what does decidueye do? It's if your opponent has four cards, this attack costs one energy and does 240. Like put a discard energy. So. And then dangerous laser. Damn, bro. Did I. Did this person Day two? Please say yes. No. He lost his two winning ends. It was sad. He lost immediately. Lost. I guess the hydrapple after. But really nice guy. It was a cool deck, from what I understand. I think Oscar Madsen made this, which makes sense. Definitely thinking so. I mean, it was kind of scary when I was at the start, but then, like, once I stabilize my board, I'm like, okay. My deck is just kind of like stronger. Yeah. This act put on like crazy pressure and like, you like laser and decidueye me. So he would like, force me to have to hit Crispin like the second dragonfold. Otherwise I was flipping. So definitely a cool deck. Yeah, I lost. I lost. Ogre pond box. Like, like the Lily's Pro, like clefairy deck. Yeah, just like, whatever. I think I. I had like a tough spot in like the game three. I probably played it wrong, I think, and I lost the Garchomp. Really nice kid. I mean, sick name too. Yeah. Constantine. That's a classic. No, I like the last name too. Geish Bush. I don't know. I tried. Sick name. Yeah. I know a lot of people from Germany. Actually. I hit six Germans. Yeah. He definitely had, I think, the coolest name out of the the Germans. Clark Pacheco is a sick name too. I like that, actually. Let's see who else here. Yeah. So I don't know. It's just me. It was my first term playing Dragon Pulp. I mean, top 64 is decent. I feel like I didn't even play that well. I just felt like a lot of the games were just like, I played good enough. And then, like, sometimes my opponents just like, misplayed a little bit. And Dragon Ball's pretty good at taking advantage of that, so. Yeah. It seemed like your opponents in day one didn't have the best days. Most of them, yeah. One guy who day two. Exactly. Like the last guy I hit. So. Yeah. Oh, yeah. This guy was weird too. So I hit this guy playing rockettonshiro. He was like a magic player. Like, oh, this is my first time ever playing Pokemon. And we tied. And, like, after the round, his name was crossed out. I'm like, did he get DQ'd for, like, doing something in the venue or did he just, like, drop, like. I don't know. There's no way you drop. But you definitely got DQ'd, right? I don't know what happened, but his name was crossed out. Like, I've never been outside of North America for regionals or a special event or anything, so I don't really know how things work other than that. Like, I've obviously been to Worlds and stuff, but, like, I find that a lot of, like, random stuff like this happens at, like, some of these European regionals. Like, how do you go 302 and then suddenly happens that nobody knows about, but you're no longer in the tournament, but no one knows what happened. Like, maybe we're just not in those circles. I mean, I don't think it was gameplay related because, like, the judges didn't talk to me or anything. So. Yeah, well, hopefully he just dropped in the tournament and I didn't get DQ'd, but who knows? Yeah, hopefully you played against some sick. Like, some sick names, though. I'm really fascinated by these names. And I really like this, though. This is awesome pot. Panajiotis, Gerasimo. I don't know. I tried. How do you say that name? Do you know, he told me when I met him. I think he says Panagiotis, but, like, you probably say with a bit more like. Like, accent. Gerasimatos. Yeah, I mean, it's Greek, so it might just be Garrett might be a hard G, but I'm not 100% sure. You think it's a hard G. Is it Garrison Matos? Yeah, I'm not sure, but enjoyable match. Like, very nice. Nice guy, what I played against. It was cool. His deck was cool. So, yeah, sweet. Nice. So, okay, we can go over the results, maybe. So I think at the start, we'll start at the top. So Lawpunny did unspars did take it down. So not a Dragon pull deck. Miloslav. This guy, he's won laic before. And if you look at his matchups and, you know, he hit Dragapult 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 times. What, 17 games. And he went collectively, I think he went 11 and 1 or no, he went ro 11 or 10. 1. 1 is dragonfold, which is pretty Good. That is genuinely impressive. Like, yeah, to hit that many in a row is one thing, but to actually like, get on the right side of all of those, like most of those, I guess, is genuinely impressive. And the person that he did lose to, he eventually beat in. Top four or. Yeah, top four. So like, mad respect here. Okay. I think this is a lot easier said than done. Like, you see the Dragon Ball matchup, and it's not actually that free for this. This low putty deck. That is one thing I do know. Like, Dragon Ball is a good magic, but it's not free by any means. So the, The. The motivation and the focus that it probably took to do this, people are going to look at it, they're like, oh yeah, he hit 12 out of 17 dragon balls. Of course he won the regional. But I would give a lot more credit than that, I think. Yeah, I mean, I think the hammer version, it can get a bit dicey if they hammer off the enriching. Yeah, I agree. Like, it's impressive regardless. Like, how many, like, yeah, I think top cut, he just hit three to Hammer Pulse and he beat them all. So I mean, his list was pretty similar to what Hail played in Los Angeles. There's like the Moltres now, I guess maybe anticipating a bit of hydropower, I guess. Raging Bolts, another matchup that can be tricky. So you have the maltas to take out the. The ogre pawns. So I mean, yeah, like, this is a deck that beats Dragapult or is favored in Dragonfly. I should just say Beach Dragon. Dragon can still win. And then like, you know, you don't have like that many bad matchups across the rest of the field. Like, fighting is basically an auto loss, but, like, that's fine. Fighting hasn't been that popular, successful. So I think, yeah, I think this deck is one to watch out for. I think now going forward, I'm curious how much it jumps in meta. Like maybe this becomes the second most popular deck after dragonfold variants. Maybe people adjust by playing some more watchtowers or playing enhanced Hammer the deck to get the target that enriching. And then maybe people take it a step further, go back to playing heroes cape in this deck. But yeah, I think this deck has definitely proved now that it's in contention for maybe like the top of the tier right below Dragapult is kind of my thoughts on it. You know, I don't know if you agree or not, but. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I want to cut with this. On Saturday, I literally bought Hale's Guide like half an hour before the cup because I didn't know what was going on and I just built the deck randomly and then I walked into this like 20 person cup with like 5 worlds competitors and just won the cup based off reading his guide. So free advertisement for Hale. It's a very well written guide. It's got some parts where I was like, all right, it's a little bit repetitive, but that's kind of what the deck is like. It's just not really that special. As far as what, what is held in the future for this deck, it's hard to really tell because the deck is very, very simple. And I think decks like this that are super simple are like pretty well countered very easily. And you talk about all the fighting decks kind of running over this and all that stuff. So like, I personally don't think this deck is going to explode in popularity. Like especially with the nature of the deck as well. It's kind of like boring. Like if we're just being honest, like it's just like Wally attached, Wally attached. It's kind of boring. So I don't think it's a deck that people are going to be dying to play, but I definitely think like it'll get a bit more attention. And the fact it was able to win a regionals goes to show that maybe this isn't just a one horse race of Dragon Pult. Maybe other things can win. We saw Hydropa win on the other side too, but definitely a good deck that I think will pick up popularity. I don't think it'll explode though. I think it's gonna be in moderation. Yeah, agreed. Okay, so maybe before we get to the Dragon Puls, we had Zapdos TCG top four with the Rockets Honchkrow. Pretty cool to see. He did ultimately fall to a Dragon Pult in the end, but on the way up he beat a lot of Dragon pults. He beat, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4. He beat 5 and I think he double ID into cut. So he was 50 before cut into Dragapult. So I think the common sentiment is like oh, like Honchko is not favored to Dragapult, but it seemed like he did okay into it. And then, I mean Honchkrow is like pretty good into most of the other decks. I mean you're a one prize deck that can one shot, two prizes. So I don't know, are we sleeping on the rockets Honchko, Neil, or is this kind of like a one hit wonder? What do you think Oh, I think we are. I think we are sleeping on the rockets haunch car. I think it's credit where credit is due. I was. We had a long weekend here in in Canada this weekend so I had a little bit more time. So I was watching the stream and I was like genuinely impressed with how this guy was playing. I don't want to like I guess I can dox his guvi Joshua. Like I feel bad saying Joshua when he's got like his alias right here when he competes. Yeah. So it was guvy Joshua. It was like it was awesome to watch him play. Like he played it really well and you'd see like there's some points in time and like that top four and even the top eight match where he's making plays that like you just wouldn't perceive someone who's playing a deck like this to make in like the most respectful way possible. Like it kind of comes off as a meme deck a little bit and like normally these like meme deck players are just kind of for fun or whatever, but you give a good player a deck like this and it. It can be trouble. And I think he kind of showed that. And I don't think this is a meme deck any longer but I do think for a point in time like we were kind of like not really like dumping on it, but we were just like if you're gonna play rockets, you might as well play rockets Mewtwo with spy Ops. I think this is here to stay though. I think with some good play like this. This deck is very strong and like you said like you're not known for beating Dragon ball but clearly he was able to do it and like if you want to watch a master class and how to play this deck like just watch his stream games over the weekend. Like I thought it was thoroughly impressive and it is very hard to watch stream and be thoroughly impressed these days. I was thoroughly impressed top to bottom. The one thing I didn't know is I had. I wasn't watching the volume but his top four match, like I remember he evolved to porygon then it got knocked out for. Yeah, that was the only. For no reason. I was like hey, that. That was the. But besides that I think I agree the play was. Yeah, no, I agree with that. He beat some good. I thought he played on the way up as well like Alberto here. Oscar Madsen. Right. So yeah, there might be something there. The other I guess non Dragon club deck in top eight, there's only three. There was Fabio. I actually Lost the Fabio with the Tara box. So, like, it's not even Raging Bolt. Just like the lilies Pearl. I mean, I think another deck that's pretty solid into Dragapult, right? I think that's a trend with all these decks for, like, all right, like, you can beat Dragonfall. Let's see how many he beat. Let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. AB fought six. He went six, and I assumed this was seven. You missed one of the bottom two. Yeah, no, it's all good. But yes, seven. So there you beat seven dragapults. So, I mean, I think all these decks, it's basically, it's like, all right, like, you're dragon match was fine. Then like, you're like, okay. Ish against the rest of the meta. It was a bit unfortunate that he hit the honchkrow in top eight, because I think that's almost like an auto loss. Yeah. You beat your boy Cato too. Yeah, he did. I was watching that match. Yeah. So, like, he. He definitely. I mean, I think had a good medical. This deck is pretty good. I think, like another deck, maybe it's a bit slept on. I think Raging Bolt was getting a lot of the hype, but, like, this deck is also pretty good, in my opinion. Yeah. On the way down too. So Wellspring gets some value. Yeah, no, sorry. I was just gonna say, like, I've been testing this deck a little bit too. I. I undusted my black and white Prism Energies. I was serious about this. The dash feels really, really strong out of the gate. Like, your turn one and two is so strong. It's just like sometime over the game. Like, sometimes you're gonna lose a turn or two, but clearly, like, it didn't really hamper him too much. I. I do really like the tool scrapper too. I think that's sweet. Sweet addition to this deck. You have a cypress to find it. So. Yeah. Cypher Sick. Dude, I am such a big fan of Cipher Maniacs. Code breaking. Like, that card is just awesome. And like, you play that in something like the Ogre Mon box, and you can kind of see how, like, good play can be rewarded. So big fan of the Cipher Maniac. Well, in the last deck in top cut was Hermione with Zork Mean Zor's been, like, having a moment. It feels like the last little bit, like it's one of the other decks. Again, like, is actually pretty decent into Dragapult. I mean, all the grass stuff kind of holds it back. I mean, Hydrapple winning and like that probably becoming a big deck is not good for it but. Oh, you played Lumiose City. Interesting. Yeah. This card is I think is pretty bad but I mean you top got a regional with it so it looks like a lot of people were playing it actually. Interesting. I picked up a, picked up a full art the card show yesterday because I was like anticipating a little something from this after I saw this list. Where's the Lumio City for like you just like end your turn with this against the rule, like. Well, yeah, you don't play badoo. Right. And like part of the problem with this deck is that Darumaka is like increasingly hard to find. And so yeah, that could be big. Like I mean I don't know. There's not a whole lot you're doing on your turn one and like you would like to go first but if you do go second, I guess you have this as an out. I'm not sure how you're finding it. Turn one but if. Yeah, it's also just a counter stadium. I guess like you play two patch. So I think the actually now I think about it, the thought process is probably like I have enough retreat in my deck deck. Like I don't need another ends castle. I might as well play something that's like situationally useful which then you could be like why don't you just play Watchtower? To which I don't have an answer to that. But you know. Yeah, interesting for sure. The see that cards. He's in play. So that's pretty cool. It's definitely good. Sorry, just one more piece on that Zoroark build. Like people have been trying to figure out Zora for like the entirety of this format. People have not been able to do it. This is a completely different take to what Zork is like on the servers. You might not see it but like this take is super hyper focused on the idea that you're just gonna hit 310. Right. You have double black belts training, double pekka run, double binding mochi and so sorry, not 310, 330. So you're always trying to go for one shots. And so like this build is just kind of screaming, I'm going to present a one prize board till I am ready to initiate this race. And so I think that's like a different build of absor than what people have been playing with. There's no reshiram in here. Like there's no low punny. You're just kind of going. And I think this is in Response to all the grass stuff like you still can't beat like stuff like festival lead, but your high drapples of the world, stuff like that, you're now able to one shot and kind of initiate when you want to. So from my Zoric warriors out there, like, I mean, I've been fighting with it for a while. I haven't been able to really figure out a list that works. And I think everybody's kind of in the same boat. This is a new take that we should be testing. So just a. Just a little two cents there. I think there's something here. It's a little bit different, but there's something here. I agree. Like the playing the one prize board and then hopefully turn to like you boss knock out like ogre pond or something. So yeah. All right, so that's top cut besides dragon pull. And then in top cut, we had mainly straight pulse or hammer pults. We had. We had one, I guess pull up frost last, which I guess is actually pretty cool. And then Ted played Hammers. Luke was on the, the Dusknar version. And then I'm pretty sure everyone else was on Hammers. Yeah. Six, five, three, two. Are all hammers or. Oh, no, actually, no, wait, Edwin didn't play Hammers. He was just playing like toward old. So I guess, you know, my question is, is Hammers just like the best version of dragonfl now? Like now that like we've seen, you know, Hedrick won the LA regions with it, Hassan got second, Kim got third with it. We saw like another one top cut. Like, is that just the way to go now? Do you think Hammers has taken over as the best version of Dragonfold? I'm not really huge on it, man. I don't know. I kind of think like when you want to win the tournament, having four cards that are just doing that in your deck is not always the best practice. But I mean it's clearly working, right? Like you see all these, these numbers, like everyone's kind of playing hammers. I think if your goal is to go into the tournament and be in control of the most things that you can be in control of, you're not playing Hammers and you just want to get like a solid day two finish. But if you want to win the turn, right guys? You got a high roll a bit, right? And these people did just that. And I'm sure they played very well, but I'm sure they got some very timely hammer flips when they needed to. And you know that once you get to the top tables, those Hammers are going to be a huge advantage over your opponents that are also playing Dragon Ball. Right. So definitely a lot definitely levels to this. It's not my favorite approach in the world. Like, I don't think I would be playing Hammers and Pulse if I were to play it tomorrow. But that's just me just being. Wanting to be like hyper in control of what's kind of going on. I don't think everyone's like that. Yeah, I think just like flipping like one or two heads across. Like the game is like enough honestly to get a big swing turn or a tempo swing. And especially in mirror, like, you know, you get the dark off the monkey or you take off a dragon pulse and like they can't monkey on the next turn against random. Random stuff like Garchomp. Like you stop them from using Garchomp second attack. You know, even against like. Even against like slot box type of stuff. It's like taking energy away. It's okay. That's like one away from like one more. For needing to get like a rage bolt attack or against low pun, you get the enriching. So I do think it's probably the best version of Dragon Pult at this point. I think because it has the best mirror match, I think it makes it the best dragapult in my opinion. So I think going forward we'll probably see it played more. Maybe like the top Dragon Ball players play it more. But we're still seeing good players, like play different versions. Actually, this process version is kind of hype. Like, it's pretty cool. I've always loved. I mean, Frost Last is one of my favorite cards. So seeing that is. Is pretty cool day and Tauros in there too. It's pretty neat. We're not losing to what's it called? Crustle. Yeah, I'm wondering if like now that everyone has like these hammers out and everyone's flipping coins that like some people go back to Zor or sorry, Dragon Ball Blaziken just as a kind of counter move to that a little bit. Yeah. From what I understand though, like Dragon Ball Blazer Kittens, like not even that good into hammers because you can boss the Blaziken like and then like just drop it for a turn because you hold pads on the dragon pull even a Blaziken. It's like they can't get both going unless they crispin. But I'm sure it's still good. So. Also, I just saw here the Knicks went on a 224 run. They were down, but yeah, dude, I was just looking at that. So it's 94.89 round, right? Yeah, yeah, it's. Oh, I meant I'm behind you then. But, yeah, that's about to happen. I missed. I was watching with the. The spurs and Thunder because it was like, middle of the night, but I heard that was like an all time classic. I mean, I watched the highlights this morning, but, yeah, straight up, like, best basketball game I've watched in the last, like, four years. Like, that game was insane. I think, like, Wemby is, like, beyond generational. This might be like a changing of the. Of the guard here. Like, he's different, bro. Yeah, I mean, it's like people call so many people, like, generational prospects, but it's like, no, he actually is a generational prospect. Like, yeah, I saw a guy. What the hell was he saying? He was like, yo, if Dylan Harper was on, like, any other team, he would be considered, like, a. A franchise player. And, like, it got me thinking, like, how much better Wemby makes these guys around him just by taking pressure off them. Right? Like, this guy is a. I don't know if you saw the. I think it was like the dunk in the. In like the second overtime where, like, I think it was like Stefan Castle threw it up and Chet is marking Wemby and Stefan Castle throws the ball, like, I'm not kidding, like, maybe 10ft in the air, and just nobody can get it but this guy. And he just goes up and slams it. It is such a ch. Cheat code because they're putting two. They have, like, Caruso on him too, just as backup, and so it completely opens up someone else. So I think, like, this guy is on the path to being something insane. Yeah. I think, like, if he stays healthy, like, you can make the argument he's on, like, goat trajectory. I mean, people compared the game last night to, like, LeBron's 29 out of 30 against this, the Pistons, and they're like, you know, that was actually a really good comparison. Whenever, like, you know, on Twitter sometimes, like, or even on Instagram, like, I'll get a reel where it's like, just like old school highlights. Whenever LeBron's Gaming Pistons Game 5 comes up, I always stop and watch it. It's just, like, so amazing. And like, when I watched the highlights last night or this morning of the game last night, that's kind of the vibe I got. For sure. For sure. Yeah. No, it was a crazy day of sports yesterday. A lot of stuff happened. Like, it was the Montreal Buffalo, Game seven. I saw Montreal one. Good for them. I'm happy. I'm not. I'm. That's right. You're a Bandwagon Savers fan for the playoffs. But no, I'm just a Leafs fan. I mean, that, too, but I'm a Leafs fan. I will never cheer for the Habs, dude. I would like, rather, like, I don't know, like, random. Utah Mammoth win the Cup. The Montreal Canadiens. I. I am so pissed off. But it was a great game. Like, great hockey game, like, through and through. And I just think, like, this is, like, the second best time of year for sports, and if the Jays were a little bit better, I think I'd be enjoying it a lot more. But we're definitely having some fun right now. And if the Knicks come back and win this, we might have to have a conversation. Well, the Knicks just hit, like, a quiet bounce to tie it. Then James Harden just had to step back, actually. Yeah, like, bro. What? Oh, my God, it's an ot. And then Brunson. There you go. Yeah. Can we cancel Shift Gear so we can watch this game? Well, we have commercial break coming up, and we can keep talking about Pokemon. All right, let's go. Let's go so we can watch this game. That's ridiculous. All right. Okay. Some other stuff that happened. Okay, so we went through top cut. That's good. I mean, there's a regional in the other part of the world. Anything else from this thing? Oh, there's also. This is cool. Yasmine. She almost made top cut with the Typhlosion. Lost two win and ends, unfortunately. But that would have been cool to see Typhlosion go to top cut. I mean, Typhlosion does one shot, dragapult, and then I guess just using the Dracloak here for, you know, that draw engine. So that was actually pretty cool to see that one almost get there. And there was also. I think there was another cool deck. There was. Yeah. There's the Diancy Dusknoir deck. I mean, it had some hype at the start of the format that hasn't really performed. So, like, this got a top 32. What were the losses? Oh, looks like tied the winning in, actually, and then lost to a Dragonflaw. I lost to a Metagross. Turned one. Oh, no. That's so tough. Oh, man. You play Diancie, then hit a metal deck. That is really unlucky. Yeah, yeah. There's a Greninja in top 16, which is cool. There was an Alakazam Hydrapulse. There were some cool things here. And then if we go over to Campinas, Hydrophyl took it down. Anil, what are your thoughts on this? Is this one hit wonder? Is this like a fluke or is Hydrapple a real deck? I didn't know what this did until recently and then I went through my bulk and I found eight of them. So shout out Hydra apple. I don't know. I think it's actually pretty good like this. This ability is like low key disgusting combined with what the attack is in Meganium. Like you're doing some cool stuff here. So I mean, I don't think it's a one hit wonder at all actually. I think it's gonna be around for a while. And like these grass like, like, for lack of a better, like describing word, like these like grass slop decks are kind of all over the place. Like everyone's kind of playing like different combinations of grass Pokemon. But just goes to show you how powerful the forested giant plants thing is, right? You put anything together like Vivalon and still do. Well, yeah, I mean the win rate across both tournaments this week, almost 53 for hydrapple. And I mean, like the big selling point is it has a really good dragonfall matchup. But according to data, it's losing a dragonfold still. But in theory it's supposed to be very good against dragonfold since you just make a Hydrapple and like one shot and run through the dragon bolts. So I don't know, maybe the top players who are playing Hydrapple are being are successful into Dragonfold. If that's the case, I could see it being very good, but it seems like it's also beating a lot of these other decks. So yeah, I think Hydrophil's pretty probably here to stay. People like playing it and like you said, like it's kind of in this like grass family. Just basically the Forest of Giant or Forest of Vitality family type of decks. So I think it's here to stay for sure. Yeah. Nice. And then also this is a generational game we're missing, by the way. Sorry, I hate to bring it back. This is like generational. I'm getting like text messages right now from the boys being like, yo, what the hell is going on over here? Recording shift gear. This is tough. Anyways, let's. I'm a power through. I'm a power through. We got this here. We got. Okay, rockets, Mewtwo got top four. I mean, that's another deck. Again, like on paper, decent to dragapult the counter gain and the lucky helmet I thought was interesting. I mean the counter game is unlocking Mewtwo's attack a bit earlier because like you have to get e switch normally and then lucky helmet. Like one of Mewtwo's problems is sometimes you just get stamped or judged and draw nothing. So yeah, I thought that was like an interesting inclusion in this deck. Countering into card that I thought has been very underplayed. It has been underplayed actually. When I got printed last time, it got played a lot. I felt like, like low key. Like it's a gross card in a lot of situations. I just feel people don't play it. Yeah, I mean I guess with this deck you have the petrol so you can get easier and you have the box. Yeah, you are right. It does feel like it hasn't seen as much play as it maybe could considering how strong of an effect it is. There's also a lot more jank I think in Topka here there's a Starmie. Actually Mega Stormy was the second most popular deck that you tracked. Yeah, I don't even know if we can call this jank anymore. This is like this is real. Well, this is the mega process version where in Prague we saw the Dustner version do the best. So back to Mega Frost last. It looks like there. And there's a strong card. Yeah, it's just a solid card. I agree. We had the Festival league getting a top cut as well. I mean Festival is just like unfortunate. The Dragon Ball matchup specifically the pull matchup's not very good because otherwise like you beat almost every single deck I think in the game when you don't brick. So I don't personally like playing psyduck. Like I just think if you're benching grab skin psyduck like you're giving up two bench spaces which I just think is too many to give up. Then you just don't have enough space for thwackies and Diplons. Like I think I'd prefer just playing a double rellor if you want to counter drag a pull just like make your matchup stronger into like just the normal Pulp build so like you can stretch her when they knock out Rabsca. But it's cool to see festival. You're doing well here. Like it's probably my favorite deck in the format. And then Jericho got top cut with Raging Bolt. Only one Raging Bolt. This is, I'd say this is more of like a slot box style deck. So it seems like slot box is picking up and play a little bit and seeing some success. So yeah, I think it's gone in there too. That was serious. Exactly. Four Kangascons. So yeah, definitely some shake ups here. What was the most popular deck here? Let's see. Or second most popular deck. Raging Bolt. Okay then. Mewtwo Zorac. Well Putty checks out. Yeah. Dragon. So Jackal was 33 here. What was it in? I think it was 25. Yeah, 25. So a lot less popular. We're in Utrechtrekt so. Interesting, interesting stuff. Are we in hell? I think we still are. Like personally I think we probably still are. Red cards coming. So Dragonfall gets buffed again. Yeah, Bizarre gets buffed. So that's good. We're gonna have some answers. And then apparently Mega Greninja, the best way to play it is with Dragapult. So that's also lame but oh it's great news. Yeah, I, I, at least it's gonna be good. I was kind of worried that Mega Greninja was just gonna suck so hopefully it's at least good. I don't know if it's, we don't know if it's good yet but I just see that's how it's been played in Japan. Whenever I go on poke a book. Yeah. It's always a Dragon Ball. Well no like I saw like they play it with just like the normal Greninja too. But I saw like they're playing it with here. They're playing. Yeah. Like here there's this version. I mean they have the normal I think normal Grinjo with Dragapult. Oh yes. The classic 331 Dragon Ball. My favorite line. Yes. They have like the Dust Mar line still so similar to how it's played now. So it's still like I guess undecided what the best way to play it is but I've been seeing people play it with Dragon Ball so yeah, it's pretty sweet. Yeah, that's like my, this is my favorite deck to play right now. Just playing Greninja is so fun. It's not like particularly good but it's so fun. So like getting Mega Greninja will be even more fun. I think like the biggest thing that comes out of the set actually is not even mega Greninja. It's 70hp Froakie. Yeah, it's crazy. I couldn't believe we didn't have one. I think that's just like that was just like a miss from like someone in the game designer. Like they rotated both The G block fro keys and didn't realize it was like, there's no way this was intentional. I hit a greninja on my run and, like, yeah, like, my opponent having 60 HP Pro keys made the match a lot easier for me, for sure. Yeah. It's nuts. It's so sad because the deck could be so good, but I guess we'll get a buff in the next set. Yeah. So we'll have to see if this takes off for sure. So, yeah, I mean, interesting regionals. Oh, also, I saw in juniors, Alakazam one or not alakazam. Sorry. Slow King one. That was sick. Shout out, Slow King. Shout out, Luca for winning the tournament. Slow King. Pretty sick. They play that cool Zoroark, too. Yeah. I think when I was looking at the metagame, seniors and juniors, there's even more dragapult pill than masters. Juniors, it was at 40. Oh, my God. And seniors, it was 44%. So y' all need to get creative down there, bro. What's going on here? Play some other Dax. What are those kids up to? Okay, 40 and okay, juniors, 26. That's acceptable in Brazil. We have ethical juniors out there. All right. Shadow the juniors out in Brazil, bro. You guys are. You guys are pioneers. I respect all of you. Yeah. So two interesting tournaments. So again, Dragonfall dominated, but both tournaments won by something different. And there were some other decks in top cut, so format's still kind of mid, but we're seeing some more decks see success, so hopefully that continues. And we have, what, Melbourne this weekend and then Indianapolis the next weekend. And after that, I think it's Turin. So we'll see chaos rising. And then it's Naic, and I see he's, like, just creeping up on us. Dagger three right there. You see that? You see that three? Well, I'm behind you by, like, 20 seconds. They're already up six. No, you're, like, way. You're, like, way behind me. Yeah. So same then. They're about to go up nine, right? Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah, I'm watching it right now. Yeah. But by the time this comes out, the New York Knickerbockers will have won game one of the Eastern Conference finals, which is bonkers to consider given that when we came on air, I was listening to Jared Allen give a third between, like, third and fourth quarter interview about, like, how everything's going so well, and they were up, like, 20, so. Yeah, I mean, you love to see it. I mean, I don't know if I love this. I think I'M cheering for Cleveland here, to be honest, dude, Jared Allen and Donovan Mitchell are very likable players. Sure. I. I think they're very likable. Yeah. I hate. I do not like James Harden, but, like, the rest of them, I'm fine with. I mean, Harden, I think, is a bit overheated. I think he does play unethical basketball, but so do all the guys. And, like, it also puts more respect on our hometown team's name that we lost to these guys. That's always the way I look at these things. Maybe it's, like, toxic and not the right way to look at it, but, like, I was always cheering for the teams that beat the Leafs to win the cup. I was like, please, just give me this copium. I need it. I need it so bad. Awesome. Here. Evan Mobley. You know, I'm. I'm bad. I'm glad that Scotty is, like, surpassed him, like, definitively, like, probably. People try to pretend like they're in the same tier. So, yeah, that was a wild, like, era where people were trying to actually pretend like this was a. This was a conversation, bro. They're putting him in. Like, they're like, oh, he's like, Kevin Garnett is his floor. I'm like, bro, like, his floor is not a top 20 guy of all time. His floor is Kevin Garnett. Yeah. Okay, man. Crazy for a while there. So. You know what I really don't like? The only thing I don't like about Cleveland is their announcer. You can hear it, like, when they play home games through the. The tv. He is, like, insufferable. Like, genuinely insufferable. So I honestly, maybe I am cheering for the New York Knickerbockers now. I know. I just thought about that. I have to give also a bad shout to Cleveland. You know what their home broadcast does that I think is, like, the stupidest thing ever? What? They have this thing called the Diff, where they literally calculate, like, how much a team is winning or losing by. It's, like, all, like, on the screen, right? Wait, let me see if I can find it. Like, it's. I think I know what you're talking about. It's so disrespectful to your viewers. You're, like. You're basically just calling them. Like, you guys can't do math. Like, here, like, bro. Like, yeah, yeah, I've seen this. It's like, 93.78. Like, the diff plus 15. Thanks, guys. Seriously, what are we doing here? I do. I will say like, there is a place for, like, usable scoreboard widgets. Like, for example, like, baseball just introduced, like, the ABS challenge widget on, like, their scoreboard will show you, like, Toronto 2, New York 2, and then you'll have, like, two little icons indicating how many challenges you have left. That I appreciate. This is just, like, absolutely destroying your viewers. Like, you're just saying, like, you guys just can't do math. This is not a good widget. It's not something I'd want. You're making the Ohio education system look bad when you're. You're doing. Yes. Like, I think people. Yeah, that's tough. Like, basic arithmetic. So. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Dishonorable. Shout out to the Cleveland broadcast, whichever channel does the broadcast. Yes. Yeah, no, I think that's all we got. Someone please buy my World cup tickets. I listed them for sale in Vancouver, B.C. for June 26, and I don't want to go. Damn. It's like. It's like three grand, bro. I'm not doing all that. Like, I'd rather sell my tickets for, like, four bills and then just go to a game here. Like, me and dad. Tim. Basically, me and Dadton just said, like, yo, we're gonna go if it's 600 or under, which it will be. Okay, well, so what do they know how to sell? They don't have the resale rules in D.C. so you can sell them first. No, they. Yeah, they don't have it. So Amanda is New Zealand, Belgium, that June 26 game. Oh, it's not even Canada. No, it's not Canada. Yeah, you can see, like, I. My face value was 460. Okay. We are losing money, which is brutal. But I mean, whatever. It's fine. I mean, four. I mean, actually 400. I'll just say it's, like, reasonable for the World Cup. That's actually expensive still for, like, to sit against, like. Yeah, like, this. This group game is not even, like, the home country. How much of The Canada tickets? Se guitar? Oh, they're ridiculous. 800 earlier. Yeah, I might do Germany, and I think it was Cote d' Ivoire in Toronto. Yeah, I might do that one. Like, me and Dadson are basically just saying, like, yo, as long as it's like 700 or under, like, we're in. Whatever, bro. Let's see. I don't even think they show up in Toronto anymore. They might have just taken them off, I think, in World cup, and now there's all this other stuff. I actually got tickets to one of the fan festivals I'm quite excited for that, actually. Yeah, that'll be pretty good. Yeah. Let's see. World cup tickets, Toronto. I mean, I like the subreddits and there's people, like legitimately panicking about how much the tickets are plummeting right now. All right, let's see. Canada versus Bosnia. Holy $1300 to go. So here's a fun one. So, as Toronto FC season ticket holders, we never got access to any advanced World cup tickets, right? And right now, like, two days ago, they emailed us saying, hey, we have a bunch, and basically saying we can't sell them. Does anybody want to buy these tickets? And they emailed every member to come buy these tickets because people aren't buying them because FIFA priced them so high that, like, it's not even sold out. Like, it's crazy how it's not even sold out and there's like these like false market pumps, like what you're seeing right now where people price it like $1300, even though there's still some available from FIFA themselves. Like, it is bonkers how. Like, you know what? I'm very interested to see what happens here because there are real issues, I think, with the attendance for some of these games. Like, there are going to be some issues. So I'm curious. Yeah, I mean, common FIFA l with the ticketing stuff. Yeah. I mean, I think what, like, whenever I do normally for big events is I really just sit and I wait until right before and like, buy them. My dad and I, we went. We went to the ALCS game six and seven. He came to my apartment and we had my computer and like, my laptop. We just refresh, like every second, try to snipe the tickets as people panic. Sell. So, yeah, it's. I don't know, man, this is going to be bad, I think. I don't think it's going to look very good. And like, what people have realized too, and like, this is what I realized the other day. It's like the group stage is legitimately meaningless now in, like, the new structure. Because what's happening now is since there's 48 teams, three of the four teams basically from every group move on. So what you're saying is when one of your three group stage matches and you're moving on. Before it was like, genuinely tough to get out of the group stage. Like, you get four points in the group stage. Even tie two, you might get out. Yeah, yeah, you can get out with two draws. I think it's possible. So, like, that's why I think These are also not selling like crazy because you're paying a thousand dollars to watch, like, basically nothing. Yeah, a lot of the time. So I don't know. Like, that's why, like, when people ask, like, do you think Canada's getting out of the group? I think I say absolutely. Like, I think we're gonna beat Qatar, right? You beat Qatar, you're out of the group. Problem solved. Soccer, like, I don't know. They don't seem like a powerhouse to me. Are they. They used to be really, really good, and I think now they're just a little bit better than Italy. And it's not really saying much because Italy is just not good. They're like a mid tier, like, European nation. I think I saw Alfonso Davies got injured. Is he gonna be playing or what? No, he's gonna have some problems. I don't think he's gonna be ready. Yeah. I don't know. Bayern and Canada have this, like, weird, like, tussle right now over his rights about who cares about him more. And, like, they just keep fighting each other and it just. The dude's just hurt. Like, he's just hurt. He needs time off and he keeps coming back and hurting himself more. And so, like, I don't have high hopes for him to play, but we'll see. I mean, I. I think at this point, like, if you're a Canadian citizen and you've played defender at any point in your life, keep your phone on. On ringer. You might get the call. Like, it's looking bad back there. I'm not gonna lie. Hopefully. I mean, maybe if we make it out of groups, he can play in our round of 32 game. Yeah. I don't know how the qualification rules work, but I assume if you're rostered, you can just hop back in. Yeah, probably. Right. So. Yeah. Well, hopefully he gets on our team for that. So. Yeah, it's. It'll be looking grim, actually. I think this game is the NAIC weekend, so. Right. You mentioned that, actually. Yeah. And the. Well, then I guess they're not playing in Toronto again. So then like, yes. Go to Vancouver if you want to watch Canada. Vancouver's boat. Yeah. The other two. And then we get in Toronto, we're thinking me another thing me and dad. Bad. Sorry Dadton Were considering is blindly buying this TBD versus TBD and just hoping it's a good game. Well, I was reading that, like, the potential things like England is one of the polls for this one or like Croatia was one of the polls probably for this. Yeah. But the problem is, like, on the contrary, like, like I said, with everybody basically getting through, you could just get garbage versus garbage. Like, it's totally possible in this new structure. So I don't know, like, I don't think around. I don't know. Someone who knows a World cup better correct me, but I don't believe round of 32 ever existed prior. I'm pretty sure it didn't. I'm pretty sure it's just round of 16. So I don't know. This is all new to us, so we don't know how this is gonna go, but it's starting to look real grim, dude. I'm not like, I'm not liking what I'm seeing with these attendance numbers. And just like the general attitude towards the World cup right now is not good. So we'll see. Yeah, it feels like just too expensive, I think is the problem. Across. Yeah. Both Canada, US I haven't seen what the price is. Like, in Mexico. I assume they're also expensive. Let's see. Mexico City World cup tickets. Give me the gas meal. I mean, they can't be cheap. I'm pretty sure they price them all the same. Like on the face. Holy. They're even more expensive than the ones in Toronto. Oh, it's because it's a Mexico home game. Yeah. Okay. Let me pick up like another team. Uzbekistan, maybe. Not Uzbekistan, though. Yeah, I mean, that's probably like, you want to talk, like, bottom of the barrel matchup. Like, that's probably as bad as it'll get. Inspector Center. Colombia is definitely not on my to do list. There you go. That's more reasonable. Well, our thousand dollars so crazy at the Azteca. I mean, I would pay like, I'd probably pay a thousand dollars to go see Mexico at the Aztec. It'd probably be crazy. Like, it'd be super fun. It was like maybe a knockout game. Maybe. Yeah. I don't know. There's not a lot of things I'd pay a thousand dollars for. That might be one of them, though. Yeah. I don't know. For me, I think it would have to be either. It would have to be like a Raptors play. Okay. Was the only, like, probably sporting event or like, if, like it was like Olympics. Team Canada, like basketball. Yeah. Consider doing it, but I don't know. I think. Yeah, there's like. I don't know. And a lot of times you go to these games and like, it is better to have just been at home watching on tv. Like, there are a lot of times where that is you go for the atmosphere. Like, the angles are way worse in person and like, 100. 100. But, yeah, no, I'm curious to see how this pans out. It's not looking great, but we'll see. Yeah. So. All right. Well, I hope everyone enjoyed our detour at the end there. I mean, we did the rambling at the end, actually. So if people wanted to click off, they got all the Pokemon content. So we're being kind. Very kind to our listeners, actually, you know, I had someone come up to me and tell me they. They're actually majoring in sports. Sports management. Or like, their. Their field of work is sports, so they enjoy the sports talk on shift gear. He's like, it's the perfect podcast. Sports and Pokemon, perfect. Yeah. You know what? I think the same thing, man. Amen. I. I agree with you. I mean, I. Yeah, I played on someone tonight as well who was like, oh, I love the banter. I was like, yeah, all right, cool. I'd like to hear it. Yeah. No, if y' all are still here, we appreciate y', all, for real. Let us know down below for so in hell, if you're buying World cup tickets, if the New York Knickerbockers are winning the NBA championship, let us know. All that stuff down below. I don't know. Is there any. Is it. Do you have any shout outs you had anything like. No. To shill now? We're kind of over that. That phase. Hey, we're no longer, like, businessmen anymore. I know. Maybe next week I'll show something just to balance it out. Yeah, just to balance it out. Oh, well, anyways, if y' all are still here, we appreciate you. We'll see you next week. Till then, peace. Later.