What's the Play for NAIC?

Wagwan Generals. Welcome back to another episode of the Shift Gear podcast. Karen's gonna do a really good job of cropping me this week. So you can't see the NBA Finals going on in the background right about there. So if you see me periodically looking over, right now is game three, and it's been pretty good so far. Nick's Knicks fell behind early, but they're. They're starting to mount a comeback here. Yep, some good three point shooting. Actually, last week I saw a comment they were disappointed we didn't break down the Thunder spurs series. I'm actually surprised we forgot to. Yeah, we kind of forgot. I think last week it was just like, so late. I had. I think we both had like, insanely busy days and we were just like, slipped our mind. I don't know. Like, even your favorite free to play podcasters have their off days. We have more off days than on days, but we try. Bad performance from us, for sure. Yeah, there's certain, like. It's funny because, like, we've been doing this, what, for almost three years, I think now. I think. Yeah, we started like the fall a couple years ago. Yeah. Wait, when was it? It was 2000. 20. 23. 23 fall. Yeah. Damn. It's been three years. Geez. But what I was saying is, like, sometimes we do an episode and I think about it after. I'm like, that was ass. But it ends up being like our best episode. Last week I had, like, no recollection of what we talked about. Like, I had, like, when I was making the thumbnail, I had to go back in and, like, rewatch the episode to remind myself what we were talking about because we were so fried doing it. Like, were just so tired that, like, I just couldn't remember what we talked about. So rare miss from. Well, not really pretty common miss from us, but we forgot to break down the NBA or NBA semifinals last week. So, yes, we're a little bit of a miss, but we're back. Well, we're on the precipice and, you know, the Knicks winning a championship. They might be champions by the time next week's episode comes. Comes by or even by any. By the time Naic happens, actually. So they might do it. Man, they look really, really good. They remind me of. I don't know, they kind of look like the. The Pacers did before the finals last year, like, where they were just, like, just finding ways to get it done. I don't know. They look good. Josh Hart's on an absolute ripper right now. So we'll see. We'll see. OG is also performing. You'd love to see it. So, yeah, he invited. He invited Sunny Lee to sit courtside. So I'm not. Not surprised he's performing so well. Yeah, these guys always invite these girls, like, to sit courtside, and then they end up dropping, like, 50, always. It's like a easy peasy. I saw that Anne Hathaway is an OG fan. So I was like, I'm like, damn good for OG dude. I saw that too. He, like, ran into her or something, and then they were, like, chatting it up. It's like, my boy og, man. He's different. Yeah, she was on. I think it was like, Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon, one of the Jimmies. And like, talking about, like, oh, I love OG and like, I was on Tik Tok and like, I saw an OG edit. Like, it ends with that line and then goes. I don't. Did you? Probably not, but did you watch the Devil Wears Prada too? No, I didn't. I didn't. So they have, like, a scene. I'm not really spoiling anything, but anybody who hasn't watched it, there's like, a scene where, like, they have a bunch of celebrity cameos because they're at a party and they have Kat in it and, like, Anne Hathaway, like, or what's her. I forget what her name, Andy. Like, in the movie, she's like, oh, I'm a huge Knicks fan. Like, so canonically, she's like, oh, a good job last year. So Kat gets the hell yeah. So I'm not, you see, I'm not. I'm not a big Cat fan, but I do like OG and I like the rest of their team. If it wasn't for Kat and like, sometimes Jose Alvarado, I would love the Knicks. You don't like Cat? I don't like Cat. Such a chill, dude. Bro. I don't like Cab, bro. Have you seen. You've seen the. You said the regular season game against the Raptors. Like, I think it was two years ago when he was just like, absolutely laying into us. And after every basket. Yeah, after every basket, he turn and say something. I'm like, all right, bro. Like, nah, don't do that. Like, like, talk your trash sometimes, but you don't have to do it after every basket. And he's a guy, like, even, like, today I was watching, like, he would. He would. He would, like, dunk over a guy who's like 6 foot 3, like, some random guy, and he's like, turning back and, like, shrugging over him, like, dude, you're supposed to dunk over that guy. Don't celebrate until you won the. I mean, LeBron's most iconic dunk is over Jason Terry. Lebron's mean mugging him after. So, I mean, he's not on every play. Okay, okay, that's fair. Not on every play. That's fair. Yeah. I think there's a time and place, so. Yeah, we'll see. Like, bro, you see Wemby, like, posterize somebody every single game, but he doesn't turn around and then give them the works. Right? So, like, that's my beef with Cat. And I also found that, like, in the media, he's just insufferable. But again, whatever he's. He's had a tough go, so hopefully they get it done. Yeah. So we'll see. It would be good for the city. I think it'd be some great celebrations. So. Cool. I'm trying to think what else before we hop into talking Pokemon happened. I think nothing too crazy. I went to a Tempo game on the weekend. It was actually very good. Like, the. The vibe. They do a really good job. So it was really fun. Me and my sisters went. We kind of crushed. My girl, Money Mabry, she's showing out. She said okay. She didn't shoot well yesterday, but okay. Yeah, it was a good game. Brittany's tight. That's. That's the real bucket. A lot of layups, but she got her points. Lots of shots. Little Russell Westbrook, like, very Russell Westbrook esque. Izzy Harrison made her season debut. She actually played very well. So, yeah, she. She had a few. I watched that game. Actually. She had a few, like, dagger threes. Yeah. When she hit her first, like, four or five shots, like, came in, like, kind of like, blew the game open. The first. It was fun. Like, it was. It's nice to have basketball in the summer in Toronto. So I live really close to where the stadium is, so I'll have to go to a few more games. So it was fun. No, I've also been very into the tempo. It's been pretty fun to watch the. The dub, like, just watching, like, it's very different to the NBA, like, watching the wnba, but it is very entertaining. For what it's worth. Like, there was one game they played against the Sparks, and it was like, Kelsey Plum just running, like, circles around all of our players. And I found it to be, like, the most entertaining sporting thing I'd watched all week. So definitely interesting. But, yeah, no, it's been. It's been good. I don't, I don't think o' Marley's are in the Carl Calder cup finals. No one's gonna care about that. But Leaf's farm team, Toronto Maple Leafs team that I've come on here many weeks and said are maybe in one of the worst positions in sports due to their prospect pool has just had their prospect pool go to the finals of the the minor leagues. So Gotta mean something. Gotta mean something. Maybe I'm coping. Yeah. I mean that'd be nice for the Marlies to win. Always nice to have so cool. Yeah. It's our our sports talk this week making up for last week. So I think this week we're going to do tier list for Nic. Well briefly recap turn special event and there's also the Japan Championships. I don't know if you saw that. So we can take a quick look ahead to pitch black before we start. I do have to do a bit of shilling and you'll sure I today or I guess yesterday when this episode comes out. I launched the signups for my worlds mini camp. So we got Henry Brand Christian Fontenot as guest this year. This is my second year doing it. Really excited partnering with Game Castle out in Redwood City. So if you are a junior or senior or you have I guess a kid and they're interested link is below. I'm doing one Naic also this week I'm really excited about so should be good. So all right, that's our shilling out of the way for the episode. We can talk about Pokemon and Neil. Probably the most exciting deck to win a major I might even say in the past few years. I don't know. We had hops Trevenant take down turn SB Jose Lopez my goat. What is where do you rank this in all time like unexpected dubs for a deck? Yeah, you, you just mentioned that stat of like the last few years being the most surprising thing and like I can't really think of anything that tops this to be honest. You might be right on that one. This is something. This is something especially given that you were out here talking about this like two, three weeks ago or whatever you've been. You've been. You've been on this for a minute. So like I'm happy for your people. Yeah. I mean it's a fun deck. I really enjoyed it. I forget who there's that one guy who got top 64 at Prague or with it. And the deck is super fun. So I'm super happy to See Jose do it. And I was trying to think any, like, what are some other like, out of left field wins for a deck? I mean, I have. I think when Aiden won like a regional with a tournament Lugia format, that was one I was thinking of actually. Iron Thorns winning Worlds was another one. That's a good one. Other than that, I can't really. I mean, Sarah Ledge winning. I guess the San Juan sp this year, that's actually another left field. Yeah, I'm trying to like, go through some of the old tournaments right now and try and find like, yeah. Random sleepers. You know what? Actually one I'd give a really good show to is the Mega apps on Mega Kangaskhandak. When it first came out. I think it was Milwaukee last year. The ToRD win the regional with it the first time around. I can't remember. It was Las Vegas, right? Yeah. He won with. Oh, no, you're right. It was. It was towards Xander and Hale. They all played it, but they none of them won. That was the time Jackson one with Charizard. So. Okay. Yeah, you're right. I think you got. I think tops. Trav takes the cake here. I can't think of anything else or not. Crazy Feraligator winning that Champions League and like, never getting another day two, like ever. Wait, what? I don't even know about this. Don't you remember, like last year, like right after rotation happened, like, Feraligatr won that one Champions League. Wait, no, I don't like fragrant from like temporal forces. Like the total guy. Yeah, I think it would be this one. No, wait, this one? Yeah. Champions League Fukuoka. No, for alligator one. Sick. I didn't. Yeah. I didn't even know about this. That. That is probably a bigger slam dunk than what we just saw. Just because it's Japan and the numbers are insane. But I mean, Hops. Trev, bro, I was watching it and I was like. I was actually tuning into the stream and I was thinking I was like, this might go all the way. Like, I didn't see anything in the bracket that could really stop it. It was just. It kind of just hit like a miracle run. Yeah. So. And like, I saw Jose a really good story. I saw he was shouting out his dad and his family, all that support. Support Twitter. Jose Lopez, Pokemon. What's it called? I always find that like, Twitter search is so bad that it's better just Google people's like, name and then find their account that way. Twitter is the worst dude. So. Yes. Look there. There he is. Dream come true. So super happy for him that came to his dad. So we had lots of, lots of words. So that was super good to see. I actually tuned in at the very end of the finals when I heard Top Shrimp was gonna win. So super happy. Shout out to bro. Shout out. Jose. Yeah. You're my favorite player right now. Taking Hopper Chef all the way. So I guess now I say this is a decanil. Is this gonna have any impact on Naic? Are we gonna see a surge in Hops Trevenant? Because I assume the meta share for this was probably sub 1% of this tournament. If we look. Yeah, let's look first. 0.44. 57 win rate three in day two. Okay, so 33. You know what? My boy Tony Vuong played it. That's hilarious. Like, I will run into that guy like every regionals. That's bro. But I do have to say, like, I do know some people playing this right now. I know some, like notable players who are trying out the Hops Trevenant. I think it's. I think it's one of those metas and we'll jump into this when we get into the tier list, but I do think it's one of those metas where people are very bored about what's happening. Like, like, I think like everyone is kind of staled out and I think when something cool like this, like kind of emerges out of left field, people are naturally going to try it out. Just because I know, I know like so many people. And I think this is the most I've ever seen before a major IC where people are still lost like four days before the event. So there's a lot of lost souls looking for decks. Hops Trevenant could be that deck. Now, is it going to balloon and go crazy? Probably not. But I do think that it. It could be like a 3 to 4% deck of a test swamp. Yeah, I think the hard part is like, people have to learn deck in like a week. And then I don't think we're going to see a lot of the top players like pivot to this. But I could see this making. Making it to like a 2, 3% to. Some people are like, like you said, don't have a deck. They want to have some fun. And obviously it's proven that you can do well with it since it won. So there were a couple like exclusions I thought was interesting. There's no ladias or hops zation in this list, which is normally like a package. You run to attack turn one. But I guess Laudios is a bit of a liability. It's not a hops Pokemon, so it doesn't activate. Horrifying revenge. So the double. I do like the double in here. You know, I think one thing I found with the deck when I was playing, it was like, it was kind of hard to close out games sometimes. And the double, just like Hariyama, right? You can have some boss, turn any of your poke pads, your Ultra Ball into a boss. So nice list here from Jose and a big dub. And in second place, another deck that, you know, has been like, slowly on the rise with Brendan Cameron with the Slow King deck. So, I mean, the big card it got was the Metagross. And his list is actually like super clean. We're used to seeing like Slow King with like all these random Pokemon and he's literally just like, nope, cure Metagross. My only two attackers. So I guess this result might have the biggest effect on Naic since maybe it scares people into playing Shaman. It scares people who are playing Slow King, like off the deck, maybe. Sunil, what impact do you think this result has on NAIC this week? I think it has a huge impact on Naic this week. I think people see this and. And knee jerk a little bit, but. Okay, so the. The Shaman thing, like, yeah, that is definitely a part of it. I don't know how much some of these decks really need Shaman to survive this matchup. There are other texts that kind of go along with it. I do think you will see a little bit of a ticket from Shaman. Not to scare anyone off from playing Slow King. I still do think it's a good play, but you'll definitely see a tick up from Shaymin a little bit. I do like this list a lot. Like you mentioned, there's normally a lot of nonsense going on with a bunch of different attackers and stuff. And this doesn't have the Annihilate. It doesn't have the Haxorus. There's a bunch of different attackers this doesn't have. But it just shows how strong the Metagross is, man. When I first read the Metagross, the way it read did not make me think that you could do 300. Just the way it's worded. If you look at it, it's weird. Pokemon rules, because you may. So like, Pokemon is a game where it's do as much as you can. It's like how if you use Sacred Ass with one Pokemon, even the cards is five, you put one. So they should have. I mean, they maybe wanted this to go Slow King. But if they worded it like, discard three metal from this Pokemon. If you do, then do 150, then I guess it wouldn't work. So maybe like the designers, like, you know what, let's have some fun with looking and then word it like this. It's. Yeah, it's an interesting way to. To word a card for sure. But yeah, no, I really like this card. I think it opens up a lot of doors for Slow King too. And you play Lily's Clefairy, so you can effectively just. Just deal with drag bolts whenever you want. You also have the brave Bangle, which helps you hit some cool numbers. So I really like that card. I really think this list is clean. Brandon is obviously a great player. So good deck in the hands of a great player and you get a good result. Yeah. The rest of top cut, not too exciting. The only unique deck I think was Emma got top eight with kind of something similar to Blitzel was playing the Clefairy slop, I think. Who did she lose to? She lost how? She lost the Hobbs Trap, which makes sense, I guess. You can't really trade with the one prize deck. So, I mean, this is a good result again for this style of swap. It feels a bit under played, I think. So maybe this picks up. I'm not sure. This deck is like. I don't know. It's kind of unfun to play. I tried it a little bit over the week. Feels very unfun. Especially when the, like, the decks that just like, came in the finals of like, this big special event leading into nic. The first event of this format were both single prize decks. I don't know. Kind of. Kind of scary hours to play something like this. But I agree with you. I think people will play it. I just don't think it'll be an astounding number. Yeah, she still lost to a dragon pole, but otherwise went 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 1. And some good players being defeated as well. Yeah, the rest of it's whatever. There's a few dragon pull. It's two pull. Blazikens is actually kind of interesting. So we've seen that one kind of slow down a little bit. We had Raging Bolt, Al Kazam. Nothing else too crazy to go over. Yasmin, another good performance on the Typhlosion. That's kind of hyped to see. Sweet. So there's a festival lead and a Zoroark up there too. There's some cool stuff, but it wasn't really too yeah, there was. This list was interesting. Like the sparkling crystal double red card list. Yes, that is interesting. You know, like, I guess now that'll be a red card. Like you can use that as your disruption and then just play crystal instead of having no stamps. You can do it more aggressive. I guess crystal is slightly better than Neoper because you can't hammer it. So. Yeah, I think it's good. I. I just think that I don't. Man. Like, you just scam so many games with unfair Stamp that it just feels irresponsible to not play it. Like, even though this is. Even though this is better into like Pulp Mirror. Like, I just think you're throwing a lot of different matchups by not playing Stamp. And I think going into nac, like normally, like, I think at naic, you see. And like, you know what? Actually, sorry, I'll save this point for when we talk about Dragon Ball in the tier list. Don't mind me. I wanted to talk about just like the. The numbers of Dragon Ball DLC and how like it being the biggest IC kind of affects the amount of BDIF you'll see in the room and stuff like that. So we'll touch on that once we get over there. I think there's nothing really awesome turn. I want. We want to go over. I don't think. I mean we saw. I mean Dragpole again. It's meta share 29, day two 39. So classic tournament. But it didn't take it down. We can quickly look at Japan. Like, I don't. There's not that much I want to look at. The main thing I just want to point out was the Ghost veil, which I think in English they said is hide and sneak got second place. And I think another one was also in top eight or top 16. Yeah. There's this one in top eight as well. So it looks like the archetype might be strong. Maybe it's holding up against Dragapult. And then there's also a Mega Venusaur in top four, which is the most like Japan tournament thing I've ever seen. So. Yeah. So I don't. And then Pull World is gonna be so interesting. Yeah, it's gonna be very interesting. So the Excadrill deck, that was the one deck I was looking to see if. Anyway, we're gonna make top 16. Looks like we didn't see any. There was a Greninja deck. Yeah. Which we saw kind of flop and turn in. It was actually a lot more list right now than when I was looking earlier in the day, so. But yeah, I just wanted to point out that, you know, there might be a new deck on the horizon, but we can go over to the tier list. Maybe any old. You know, we'll get through this. Maybe by the time the fourth quarter starts. I think that should be our goal. Oh, I hope so. Yeah. I hear the crowd going berserk behind me, so, yeah, let's. Let's get to work. Let's get it going. All right, so I think you and I will both be in consensus that Dragonfold has its own tier. Yeah, I'll put everything up here, even Paul Blazing. I'll put up there with it even. It's like it's kind of on the up and up. We've seen it been doing a little. A little better lately, so. All right, Neil, I guess the big question is, what do we think the collective meta share is going to be for Dragon Ball and which version is more popular? Dusk or Hammers? I think Hammers is the highest, but here. Okay, so here's what I wanted to say about that. So normally going into an IC and we've said this on the podcast, I guess, for three years in a row now that we've been doing this for three years, and I had no idea at NAIC specifically, you have a lot of people playing the safe pick. A lot of people play the bdif. It's the biggest tournament and it's the one that has the most stakes for a lot of people. But then, contrarily, there's a lot of people that come out of retirement for this one tournament year, and they're just like, whatever, let me play the best deck. This is the year where I think that is going to change. I think that Dragon Pulse numbers are so berserk and so crazy that I don't think they'll increase past the point of a normal regionals right now. So it was, what, 30% in turn. I would expect it to be something similar this weekend, which is contrary to everything I would say for every other naic, because typically people always gravitate to the top deck. But this deck is. Is a skill intensive deck that even in the mirror, the better player typically wins, which is something that I've learned in the past week, which is awesome for the format and what it is. So I do think a lot of more casual players might shy off this, especially now that their decks, like Hops Trevenant and like the slot box, are literally designed to execute dragapult. So I think the numbers will stay the same as they did in turn this weekend. So I'm going to put it around 30 collectively. But that's just my two cents. I think that's a safe number. I think also like the tournament is so big, there are a lot of casual players in it as well. Yes, but you are right, I think in terms of people who are like, they're like the people who are like in the back half of like the rankings for like the worlds, those people are all playing Dragon Ball for sure. Not all of them, but like you get what I'm saying, like they're, they'll lock in. So I think 30 is a good shout. I wonder. I think actually Hammers and Dustno are going to be very similar just because I think red card came out, which I think is a big buff for the Dusknoir version specifically. If I had to guess, I'd say something like 12, 12, 6 on like the board of what we have here. Maybe less for Blaziken. Yeah, it's a bit too much for it, but something like that. What do you think? I think it just performed really well and I've actually been seeing a lot of it around. I think six is fair. I was almost gonna say like seven. I was almost gonna say like because I. I do think that the Hammer version of Pult is overall better. So I think like slightly more people will gravitate towards it. But for the argument of this per. Like for this purpose, I think this is good. All right. I didn't put 13 here. We'll do 12, 12, 7. We'll get a 31%. Yeah. All right. I don't know a lot of guys who've had positive testing with Dust nor so far to be honest, but I mean I think it's pretty good. Like the thing with Dusknort I find is like it's not that useful in Mirror, which is like the most important thing to beat if you want to win. But it just like covers like so much like nonsense like in the Fort Meta. But then at the same time it's like if you think you're a super strong player, it's like you should be able to just beat the nonsense anyways. So I think it's very good. So okay, Slow King and Neil, is it a one hit wonder or do we think this is a real deck? I think it's a real deck. I think it's an A tier deck. An A tier pick. Personally, I don't know about the numbers. I don't think it's going to be like crazy maybe like a 7 or 8 percenter kind of deck, but it's a fun deck. It's a deck that's clearly done well. It's got a new tool, not a gross. A lot of people revisit it. And a new build just came out that got to the finals of Turin. So I. There's a lot of things going for it, and I don't think the deck is one dimensional enough to simply be scared off by Shaman. I think there's more that it can do. Well, I guess you have to probably adapt your list and play Spectra or something. I was gonna say it's probably an A tier deck, but it might be a B tier play. I don't know. Let's put on a. Sure. We'll put like low A maybe. All right. And then I think. I don't know if it'll get this. You think it'll get 7%? I was gonna say like maybe 5, because I think it's been at what, like 3% lately? Yeah, five's good. Seven might be a little high five. All right. Okay. Next up on this list is Mega Greninja. New deck. I'll put Beedrill after it too, so we can do the two new decks. I'm not super high on Mega Greninja. My testing has not been good with this deck. It just feels like it's too hard to execute your strategy. You have to set up like, multiple stage twos and then like, if you're playing Neo Upper, you just get like, disrupted once and it's like the card just like goes into your deck and like, you have to be sad. So. Yes. I don't know. I think it's like C. I might even argue D tier. I don't know if you have a different opinion than me. I've been very, very noble with this deck. Like just trying to test it and being loyal to it and getting a go to go through thick and thin. And I've tried literally everything under the sun. I'm talking total dials in the list. I'm talking like two Terra ninjas. I actually don't even think this is the best version of Greninja. I actually think the Grand Tree better. Yeah. So I agree with you. My testing has been completely disappointing with this. But I do think there is space for someone to break it. I think it's one of those decks that's like one or two innovations from actually being okay. Is it going to win the tournament? Probably not, but I do agree with you. I think it's a C tiered pick as of right now, from what we know. But that being said, I'm not going to be surprised if Mega Greninja does well next weekend. That's probably what, 2 or 3%? Yeah. It's a new car. People love Greninja. I think like two or three, there's gonna be a lot of loyalists that say, hey, I love Greninja. I'm just gonna play this, but I'm glad you and I both agree that the terror fighting version is better. That one actually was pretty good in my testing. That one's actually decent deck. Yes. All right, Beedrill's up next. I actually think Beedrill is a decent deck. I've actually played a lot just because I was trying to explore it. I mean, it's not like the best thing ever. Like, you are just like a two prize deck without a single prize attacker. But, like, the deck can like pop off sometimes. You know, you just get three Beedrills, turn two and like, you can kind of sweep. So I, like, maybe would put a B tier. It's definitely better than Greninja. Like, I think it's a tier above Greninja, so we're gonna put Greninja. And C, I think it's Beedrill, at least B tier. Unless you want to move, like, Greninja down then. No, I think B drill is actually a decent play. I actually think the decorative functions is really good, but that's the problem. You kind of just lose to yourself. That's all you really lose to. So definitely better than Greninja. I don't know if it's only one tier better than Greninja. Maybe it's two tiers better than Greninja, but it's not A tier. So. Yeah, I don't know, whatever. Like, probably a 3% tag. I think people will play this. Yeah, I think it's a decent deck for sure. All right, next up we have Raging Bolt. And I guess I don't have a slot box thing on here, so we'll just say slop combined. I'll throw that with Raging Bullet. Sure. I think just it's a solid deck. Like, I think it beats Dragapult often enough. It sometimes struggles, I think, to beat the single price strategies. Like stuff like the Alakazam. Stuff like the Slow King. I think it's good. Like, it's probably like a. A tier deck. What do you think? I think it's sneaky good too. I think it's an A tier deck above Slow King. Like, if it's not Pulse, it's probably Raging Bolt or Al Kazam, which we'll get to in a bit. But. Yeah, no, I like this deck. I think it's a good pick. I think a lot of people will play it. It might be like an 8 or 10 percenter kind of. Yeah. Oh, actually, for combining both, it's probably higher. It's probably 12 or 13. Yeah. So there's this. I mean, there's like the slot box version. Like. Okay, what do you think is better? Raging both or slot box? It's a difficult one, I think. I think. I think I was gonna say the same. I think slot box is a little bit better, at least right now. Yeah, I think the drag will match up a slightly better. Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. All right, next up on this is Zork. I don't know what your thoughts on Zork. I know. I saw Henry Brand's been hyping up like the. I forget the full name of the card, but the new, like the tome card. Yeah, the tomes. Yeah. Yeah. So I saw you put a thumbs down. It's another one, man. It's another one. I put in a week of testing into this. Like, I've wanted it to work so bad. It's there. Like, it's right there, but it just. You find ways to lose instead of finding ways to win. With this deck, no matter how well you play it, there's just some limitations that are just like kind of brutal for the deck to overcome. You're simple two, two, two deck. Playing Darmanitan clogs your deck, so you try to play the most straight version possible. But there are other decks that do what you do just better and just more efficiently. And I do think. And like, I know I said this about Micro Greninja, but I genuinely believe it with Enzorch that they're is a 60 cards in existence that will be absolutely cracked if somebody can find it. Maybe it's Henry Brand with the tomes or whatever you play with. Mega Absol or something like that. The deck can be really, really good because you've probably the one of the best matchups in the field in the Dragon Pult. Right. So there's a lot of potential for this deck to do really well. I just wasn't able to get to a point where it was cracked yet. And it did feel like there were just other decks that just did what it. What wanted to do just a little bit better. There's one in turn that you'll see. Yeah. No, she didn't. Okay. And there's. Yeah, there's one. One Darmanitan. No tomes, no Reshiram. Yeah. Yeah. We've seen a couple people playing this style, like the double whiny mochi. So, I mean, like, this is one that had success. What she. Let's see. She went 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. She went 7, 0 into Dragapult. Very good. Oh, she started 003 and then just rattled off a bunch. That sucks. That. Oh. XT1 miscut, I guess, again. Well, that's the problem. Like, you look at those matchups at the bottom, right. You're starting at the bottom tables or whatever. Like, that's the problem with Zork. It's like you will beat the best decks. You will lose to everything else, and that has always been the issue. Or not beat. Sorry. She tied Beedrill. That's impressive. Yeah, I think you can. You can get there if you play the. Because she plays double black belt, double mochi. Right. So you can get to the numbers you need to get to. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah. But it's not fun. And, like, Darmanitans actually probably puts in a lot of work there, too, if you can get the most early. Well, they just. You don't have to bench the cocoonas until you have, like, the stadium. Right. To make the drill. Oh, wait, you don't even KO Kakuna on the bench. It has exoskeleton. All right. Yeah. I don't know, man. I think Enzorg, in the. In the right person's hands is an A tier pick. I am not at the point where I'm comfortable enough in the 60 to bring it to NAICS, so I think overall, it's probably a B. All right. What, 3%? Yeah. I do think people will play it, though. I. I really do think someone out there has a 60 that is very good. I just don't have it. All right, next up, we have Alakazam did unsparse. It won our last regional with Keras's deck. It actually, like, it didn't go up that much in Medicare. In turn, it only went up 5%. So, Neil, do you think this is a tier, or is red card too much for the deck to handle? I don't think so. I think you can. It can also abuse red card really well now, right. There's. I think I'm more scared of Watchtower personally if I'm playing Alakazam. There's a lot of. A lot of Watch Hours running around, but I do think the deck is still really good. So I've seen some. Some guys hype this up over the week, so maybe it's like a 5% deck going NASC. I don't think it's gonna go hyping it up. I think I saw some crushing hammer in that list he posted. Yeah, he's. He's probably gonna play it. He's very honest with what he plays. I think he's gonna play it. But, like, I mean, we saw this right in indie, like, with Keras. Like, you give to a good player. You can go really, really far. Yeah, there were a couple players. Nathan Ginsburg is there. I think Evan Pavelski was the top 16. Caris obviously one. Yeah. I mean, you could also play area or something if you want to try and counter red card a little bit. Obviously, that's not a perfect counter, but, yeah, I still think Alexander's a good deck. I think it definitely deserves to be in, like, the A tier, like, right below dragon. Pull it. So what are we gonna say? I agree. Six percent, 7%. Six feels good. Six feels good. Give it a six. All right, next up, Lawpunny. I feel like this deck is, like, it won a regional, and I feel like it's just slowly even, like, going down and play. I think everyone playing Watchtower is a bit annoying for the deck as well. Yeah. I mean, Al Kazam adapting the dedenne and enhanced hammer is also not good. I kind of feel like this deck's falling off a little bit right now. Got collateraled really hard. You're right by all those watchtowers, and, like, stamp is a problem for it as well, and so is red card. Like, you can get into some really weird board states because you need to start keep chaining wallies over and over. And. And I also think, like, Dragon Ball players just kind of learned how to deal with it. Like, there are lines that you can take into low pony that people just didn't know the first time that they know now, like, you can lose game. There was one list someone brought to my attention, and Turin, for this deck, they had an interesting dragon. Yeah. Yeah, it was. I like that too. Yeah. Like, so the stun fist is like. It's like. Like, it's retreat lock, and then next turn you to 100 damage. So instead of just, like, spamming, like, low punny, you just do that. And then next turn, gale thrust is 330. You knock out the. The drag pull. So I thought that was an interesting card. And this guy Julian went. That is the one cool thing about Low Pony. It's because, like, everything's just a colorless attacker. You can really, like, splash in whatever you want. Yeah. You saw him playing prisms with Moltres and Stunfisk. Like, there's room for innovation there. It's just. It gets a little weird and the list is really tight. Well, he tied twice. He only went 202 against Dragon Ball. I mean, it's still decent, but. Yeah. I don't know. Hammers are. Hammers are really bad for that deck, man. It doesn't seem like. But you need to place three air balloon. Otherwise. Yeah. Your pivots become really, really difficult. And if a good player waits to hammer off your enriching, you are in danger. Yeah. I don't know. Like, it's kind of like fun. Is it in the beat or do you think it's below? No, I think it's. I think it's in B tier. I actually don't think the deck's in a terrible spot after we just went over, like, all the things that I've had for it. Yeah, I just think it beats a lot of other things. It's not terrible to do a lot of other stuff. I don't know. The. The other thing is too. You don't play spiky energy anymore, which makes your Bolt matchup kind of, if you want. I mean, like. Like, the list can be tinkered with. Like, we don't have to, like, because it has the formats evolved since. Who was it? Milo Slav one. Right. So, yeah. And I was feeling you need, I don't know, both, like Stunfisk plus the prisms plus the spike to have a chance to Raging Bull. I don't know. I don't think the deck is bad. Yeah, it is. Strong deck overall. Like a very strong archetype. I just think, like, the meta conditions are a bit tough for it. Yeah. I would be very hesitant to put it below. And Zoroark, though, I definitely think it's a better play than Zoroark or Beedrill, personally. Okay. I think there's. I think they're in the same tier, though. Like, if we're putting. Yeah, they're in the same T. Yeah. Greninja down. Then start moving some other stuff down. Maybe Greninja goes down actually. And then what do we move some of these down? What goes down though? Like. Like we just. Do you think they're like this? Yeah, that looks okay to me, actually. Down here. Okay. Yeah, that looks okay. To me. All right, I'll put Lopunny. What, 2%? Yeah, I think so. That's fine. Two, 3%. All right, we're gonna need more points. Maybe give it a. Can still beat Dragapult, but, yeah, I think the red card's a bit trickier for it. It. I don't know, maybe it's B tier. No, we'll just leave it here for now. I mean, it's not that deep. It's not that deep. Lucario. Lucario's had a bit of a resurgence. I mean, this is Lucario Hariyama, but we can say all Lucario builds. I mean, Rahul was doing well with that. The dance first version, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's another deck, though, that, like, gets a little collateral by, like, literally everyone's playing. Not everyone, but a lot of the Dragon Balls playing the Watchtower, which I think is not ideal for you. It's still a decent deck, though. I think Slow King is also not good for it, nor is Alakazam, I guess, depending on how much. Well, it depends how much disruption you have. So I think it's a solid deck. It's probably a little bit underrated, and we've seen a couple good results for it lately. So. I don't know, do you think it's good enough to be put in the B tier or do you think it's still like a C tier deck? I think it belongs to the B tier because every time you look up, it seems like there's one of these in top 16 or somewhere, like, kind of sniff in that area. I don't think we had one last week, but did we have one? I don't think so. No. Right. Yeah, but it has, like, kind of stuck its head in there a little bit before. Where's this thing? There you go. 931, I think it was. Yeah, I'm trying to find the one. There's the first net plays. John's first, too. Not here, just the. Yeah. So three, four, and top 64. And then for the Hariyama version, there's one top 60 before. Yeah. So, like, it's there. It's not awful. Someone got really mad at me last week for saying that the guy who played Lucario had no chance of winning the tournament. I suppose that was a little harsh, but I'm not wrong, so I will stand on business with that one. He was very angry with me and tagged me on Twitter with all of his wins against Dragapult. My point wasn't more so that you can't be Dragon Ball. My point is more so that you can't beat everything else. Like when Dragon Ball is the best deck. Dragon Ball is just has such an advantage over anything else that anyone plays that it is in my opinion way harder to win with another deck at this point. And Lucario is kind of something that was already discovered. So that's kind of where I was going off on that tangent. But anyways, I do, I will give it its flowers for its constant appearances in the top 16 to 64 B tier. Sounds fine. Like 5%, 4% sounds fine to me. Speaking of comments, did. Did our boy Welder. Welder Reef and Welder was in our comment section. Yeah, yeah. He got back to me and he's like, I'm not coming to any events. Okay. I was like, okay, how are you supposed to have your. That was it. How are you supposed to have your match then? That's what I said. I don't know. He's just like, I'll add you to the list of people are too scared to play me. I said, okay, man, you can run away with that. Appreciate the listen, appreciate the view and the comment. Help us with the algo. It's not all lost, but yeah, it doesn't look like that's happening anytime soon because I don't know if they're like an actual like I don't think they play the game like actively yet. I think they're still like kind of. They're still learning. Learning and building up. Okay, well, you know when they get ready to go tournaments, you're gonna go to a regional one time and you're gonna like lose your winning in on stream and like in the interview, the person's gonna reveal like, I am Welder. Reprint Welder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's gonna be like a. Like a Darth Vader situation. That'd be funny. I can't wait. So, okay, next up we have Ogrepon Meganium with Hydrapple, which this deck is actually like slowly becoming like the second most popular deck after Dragapult a lot of times in the graphics. So it's been performing reasonably well too. I mean it won the the regional in Brazil. Like we saw two in top Skin turn. I think we saw one top eight of Melbourne or those AR but Meganium decks. So. Oh, is this an A tier deck still? You think it's still solid or do you think all these dragon pults running around with moltres is too much for it? No, I think it's absolutely solid. Yeah. Then there was Actually, a lot of people was brought to my attention that a lot of people cut moltres too. Yep. Just because this was kind of falling off a little bit. So. Yeah, no, I definitely think it's an A tier deck. I got to give my boy a quick shout out. Austin and Dan Hibara just. They released a Hydra apple guide on metafy. Nice. So I'm a. I'm a fill out for them. If you guys looking to play hydrapple, check it out. I don't know if it's good or if it's ass. I'm assuming it's good, but it could be ass. I didn't send you there, but I had a shill out for the boys. I'm sure it's great. So a tier is where I would put it. Honestly, dude, like, I would not be surprised to do this around like 8 to 10%. I actually think this deck has a lot of legs. We saw a couple of them in the top eight there, so maybe it's. Maybe it's real. All right, 9% seems high, but we'll leave it there. All right, next up, Rockets Honchkrow, which I was checking earlier today. And, you know, 30 people have played Gone Day 2 with Zapdos TCG list for the Honchkrow. There's a. There's a loyal flock of honcho players. I don't know if the deck's that good. Well, okay, I should say it's like, it's good. Like, I played it, but like, it still has some, like, I think, core issues with it. I think red card is also a little bit annoying for this deck. Like, oftentimes the way dry put wins is like unfair stamp and then just like, get you. So now they have a couple more tries at it. So I think it's in the B tier is probably where I would put this deck, but I think it's like, definitely solid. Yeah, I agree with you. I think there's a lot of decks that kind of just like, were thriving on the fact that there's like, barely any hand refresh in the format. And I think now they're kind of coming back to down to earth. This is one of those. I actually think this would be like a 4 or 5% deck. This is the perfect, like, I'm here for fun. I really just want to go to Bourbon street kind of deck. And if you go crazy, you can go crazy. If not, you just. You go to the casino. Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. Are we. We'll stick with Rockets. We got Rockets Mewtwo. And, you know, where do you think Rockets Mewtwo fits? Not high on this one right now. Obviously, you have a great Alakazam matchup, but other than that, it seems like it is mostly figured out. Hammers are really bad for Mewtwo. I think there's just. It's got some problems. So I'm not super high on this. Like, it's another deck. I think red card is, like, really annoying for, like. Yeah, yeah. You don't play that much consistency. So. Yeah, I think, what, C tier? Somewhere in C for me. I think. Yeah, they want, like, 3%. Not too. Not too impressed with it. Yeah, 3%. I think if you're playing Rockets, a haunch girl is probably the best pick, which is crazy to say out loud, but I think it is true. All right, the last one we have on here is Festival Eater, one of my favorites. I think Polton Orange is getting as popular as it's gonna get. It's just, like, really bad for you. Alakazam. Playing handheld fans is annoying. You have to play tool scrapper now. There are some things that are good for it, like the hydrophil decks. Good matchup. All the slop is a good matchup. Anything, two prizes. A pretty good matchup. It almost has a good matchup against everything that's not Dragapult. So it's like high C, low B for me. I'll spend low B because I'm biased. So. Yeah. But there maybe a little 3% or 4 percenter. Yeah, we gotta make up. We gotta make up 10 here. Well, we have 14. There's still a lot of decks we didn't rank. Like, there's the hops. Trip True hops, Trev. Once you click away, it'll go to 90. Yeah. So we have 10. There we go. Yeah, there you go. Hops, Trev. S tier 10 meta share. That's how we'll make up the gap. Sure. Yeah, I like that. Actually, we should put on Trev and S tier. All right. There you go. That's our. Our tier list. You guys can flame us in the comments or tell us we did a good job. We'll accept either, you know? Are you decided on your deck yet for this weekend? I am not. I don't know if that's bad, but I'm not. I've been a bit of a. What's a. What's a kind word I can use on the podcast to describe somebody who bounces from multiple things at once? I don't really have A word. But you guys know what I want to say. I haven't been a nice boy. I've just been like going from deck to back to deck to deck. I think I'm like kind of getting to the end. Oh yeah. I've been trying everything possible to not play Dragonfall. Like everything. And it might just end up being Dragapult. Yeah. How about you? I think I'll probably play Dragonfall as well. I haven't decided like which version or list yet, but that's probably the vibe here. It's just too good. Yeah. Like my philosophy is if you're a good player, just play the best deck. So unfortunately I think we're in a metagame where that makes a lot of sense. So. Yeah, I do think there are like some sleeper picks out there though. Like if you don't want to play Dragonfall, I think anything in the A tier is a good show. Yeah. Honestly, even anything in the B tier you're doing okay. Like that's kind of the purpose of this. Like kind of to show like some other options of how to win. And we saw Hopps Trevenin, Slow King get to the finals of Turin. So it's not like we're not at a point anymore where you have to play Dragon Ball to win the tournament. Which is very, very nice. People are finding some answers to it. But I definitely agree with you. Like, yeah, Dragon Ball makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So cool. That is all we have. I have to give. I'll give a shout out. Neil. We got shout out. The boy Camille. He clutched up his invite at Turin. Very nice. To get top 64. And he got it done at the very last event of the year actually. I don't know if you. He's not 100 locked. But give a shout out to him. The U bar is a lot lower. Right. Well, he's still NA because they won't let him switch his address, so. Oh, nice. Okay. But yeah, I think it would have been easier if he was eu. So he's moving back. What is he at now? You know, like point one, I think 760 or 780. Oh, I think that's like. Like people saying like 720. He's chilling. Okay. He's chilling. He's chilling. Yeah, he's chilling. Yeah. I stopped playing, bro. I was at like 768. Let's see, I don't know, like 890 something, I think. 890. No, like points wise. Yeah. There you go. That's kind of close. Okay. A little bit more sketchy, but people told me I was fine at 768, so I'm assuming he's okay or at least close. Let's see, what's it looking like here? It's. It's 125 for North America, right? 35. Oh, 130. Oh, we added more. That's right. And then like, what, like, 10ish. People got probably auto invites this year. Yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of lost sound invites this year, so I think there's like, probably are gonna be around like 15 or 20 by the end of this. Yeah. So let's say it goes down to 150. Maybe they're at the person. 150th is at 680. I assume most people on this list have five finishes. Like, they need like a decent run. Any I see to bump and like, you would need a lot of people. So. Yeah, I think the final number will probably be around 720ish. That seems about right. So. Yeah, something like that. I feel bad for Xander, dude. He got. He's over there at 136. He's like, so high on playing and he finished like 33rd or something to bump him out of his, like, invite range. So he's gotta, like. He's been just sweating it out this week. But yeah, he was like, so down bad in Indy because he just needed like, one good finish. He ended up buying, bubbling out. So I'm hoping for his sake he gets it done or that the. The bar is low because if that's the way my season ended, I would be quite down bad. So I hope for his sake. Yeah, we'll have to see if there's like, a big tie. A big tie at the the end this year. Because they said this year it's play points of the tiebreaker. Right. They're not gonna let everybody in. Yeah, it's definitely gonna be less exciting without Austin begging Pokemon to let him into worlds. But it's fine. He was out there begging on the pavement for. For the world. Oh, dude. He was on both knees at Walmart. It was like anything to get into the spot point despite. Despite the fact that we were all kind of in agreement that it had to be play points, it was the only way that made sense. But anyways, they ended up letting everyone in. There was no hard feelings. It was okay and it all worked out. Yeah. So cool. All right. Anything else on your mind, Daniel? The fourth quarter is on my mind. We made it in time, which is nice. Yeah. All right. I have to edit shift gear and then pack because I'm leaving tomorrow morning, so. Tomorrow? God damn. All right. Safe travels, dude. Thank you. It's wild. I'll see you there. Yeah, I'm leaving after work on Thursday, dude, I'm like taking no days off. Yeah, I'm leaving at like 6 o'. Clock. I land at like midnight in New Orleans. And I'll be right first thing in line at 7:30, provided everything goes well. So fingers crossed, you know. You know how hard it is to work when you've limited or to play when you have limited days. Right? So it's like you just gotta try and concise them whenever you can. But, yeah, if you guys see us. I see. Come up, say hi. I'm sure we'll. We'll have some fun. Bourbon street, probably Saturday night is the flex, as everybody likes to at me on Twitter these days, asking where the bars are at in cities I've never been to. So I'm telling you guys right now, it's. We're going to Bourbon Street. We'll figure it out. Yeah. If you see us, say hi. Good luck, dad. Don't play Nzork. You heard it here. Actually, you know what? No, no, that's hatred if you. If you have a good list. But yeah, don't play Mega greening. I think that's my. My bottom line. All right. That one I can get behind. There we go. Yes, sir. Anyways, thank you all for being here. Let us know down below what you're gonna play this weekend or if we mess up the list or whatever. And we'll see you next week after NASC with a recap. Thanks, Rener. Peace. Later.