Brent: 0:05

Alright, guys, welcome to the Trashlanch podcast. It's the only podcast about the Pokemon trading card game. This is going to be a quick one because there for like the first time in a long time, I feel like there hasn't been a big tournament in the past. And there's not a big tournament, at least for us, coming up too close, although Vancouver is around the corner. Attendance is 100%. Liam's here, Mike's here, I'm here. We're all on Twitter. Dragonshield sent Liam and I some New sleeves the other day, Power Sleeves and Soul Sleeves, which is like some interesting non color, non chromatic? Would that be correct phrase? Based naming scheme. Which is interesting, we haven't cracked those open, but we're looking forward to trying them out. We always like when people get new Hype Sleeves because, hey, it's a card game, we're all about the Hype Sleeves.

Mike: 0:52

I, real quick, I actually just ordered like 20 packs of Dragonshield sleeves because I am going back and sleeving all of the world's decks from every single year. I own almost every year from 2004 on, but they've just been sitting. Sleeveless for, for many years now and I want to start playing with them more so yeah, so I, I ordered a bunch of sleeves, I ordered a bunch of deck boxes, I ordered some of these big, like, cases, carrying cases that,

Liam: 1:26

Yeah,

Mike: 1:27

have that I've, that I've never had before so that I can, I think I have probably like 60 World's deck, so I guess 4 times 20? Yeah, yeah, something like 70.

Brent: 1:40

hoo boy, so, so, is this because you're like your local Gym League leader now and you feel like you have to show up with these retro decks to do the thing?

Mike: 1:48

That is more of a benefit than the reason. I think it's just cause, you know, I, I know that I'm gonna be a little bit more casual in, in the upcoming years, and so I want to have stuff to, to, to play with. But I am, on my In two weeks is my birthday and the day before my birthday is a regular League session, so I'm gonna bring all of these decks that day, and then kinda as a Pokemon birthday party for me, I'm gonna make everyone play them.

Brent: 2:21

Are you, are you concerned at all that some of the decks that were printed for the World Championship are not actually the best decks at that, World Championship?

Mike: 2:29

Oh yes, very much so. It's it's funny that you say that, because as I've been going through and sleeving up the, the years, it's particularly bad in the earlier years. like, 2004 to like, 2007 or like all like, not great like there's maybe one out of the four that's really top tier and the rest are maybe they're a good one of the Better decks in the format, but the list was really bad because it came from juniors or seniors. And you see some of that throughout the years, but the early years much more so, but the really funny more modern year is 2016. 2016 the decks are Mega Audino, Greninja, Yanmega, Vespiquen from Jesper, and I forget the last one, but it was also, oh Darkrai Giratina. So, and 2016 was Nightmarch, Trevenant, Seismotodex

Liam: 3:29

That's good,

Mike: 3:30

Vespiquen, Vileplume. Like, those were like the best decks. And none of them were printed. Like, Greninja is probably, like, the most, like, meta

Brent: 3:40

Greninja was a, Greninja was a pretty meta deck because it beat Nightmarch. If you set up.

Mike: 3:44

right. So like I actually went and just built Nightmarch from my old cards because I was like I can't have 2016 decks and not at least have Nightmarch because Nightmarch was so broken.

Brent: 3:54

Yeah, yeah.

Mike: 3:55

So it is funny you

Brent: 3:56

I mean, obviously I'm really only referring to 2022 Palkia. That's

Mike: 4:01

Sure, of course.

Brent: 4:02

That's

Liam: 4:03

I will say that, having the bad decks built though does lead to some like fun games. Will Jenkins has a really big retro collection, that's the guy I've been playing retro with at Locals recently. Yeah, like that's all he does, he shows up and he brings all this retro stuff. And he's got, he's only, he only has two formats. He has 2014 and 2017. like half the decks there are, like the really bad decks. He has the like, the Gyarados with the Magma Stadium that damages for the Magic Harps he's got like Weavile Lopini built and yeah, just like a bunch of random garbage they're all really fun to play with,

Brent: 4:39

Yeah, so he built the meme decks of each format?

Liam: 4:43

I, like, of course he has the staples as well, but the memes are definitely present.

Mike: 4:47

Liam, I saw that you posted that you were playing 2014 and I sent you Ross's deck from that year. That deck is a really fun deck.

Liam: 4:54

yeah, I, I played one game with Landy Garb. Like the, the guard version and it was against Plasma, And the decks seemed really good in that

Mike: 5:03

yeah. It was like a Landorus, Raichu tech deck, so it had a couple random attackers for different matchups.

Brent: 5:12

Yeah, I like, I like the Raichu, like, the,

Liam: 5:16

the Ritual was really good,

Brent: 5:16

I guess the theory is it's pretty good against the Veltal, it gives you an out against was the stupid walldeck?

Liam: 5:23

Pyro,

Mike: 5:23

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brent: 5:25

Yeah, it gives you an out against Pyroar, you're like we got, we got like a thing here. I dig it.

Liam: 5:29

dude, DCE was amazing to play with. That card's like, one of the most fun cards.

Brent: 5:33

Yeah, yeah.

Mike: 5:34

Will was actually, Will was actually the person I reached out to when I was ordering all of the supplies. I was like, what I like, I had in, I had in my head, like, what he had, yeah, so I got the exact same, like, grey boxes that he has. Like, got the Ultra Proto deck boxes, got the Dragon Shield sleeves, so I got a copy of his setup now.

Brent: 5:53

Nice.

Liam: 5:55

He's got a good setup going on, man, that's a good setup.

Brent: 5:58

Alright, mike, the other thing I should ask you about as League Leader is, do you want to comment at all on the crazy tweet that about the, um, aggro guy on Twitter?

Mike: 6:09

You talking about that like, Vinny was

Brent: 6:12

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Mike: 6:14

So, yeah, he he came to, my League Cup a couple weeks ago. I don't know I don't have, I haven't had any negative experiences with him, so he'll be allowed in our store until he has a bad experience. Cause I think for the most part, he seemed like a newer player that was maybe a little rough around the edges, but was really just trying to learn the rules, like the tournament rules. Like for example, he had a question one time. During the League Cup, where he played an Irida, and he got two cards from his deck, and he kept searching his deck, and then his opponent was like, and then he like, tried to swap one out, and his opponent was like, oh no, you can't do that, you've already picked those cards, and they called me over, and I was like, well, has he shuffled his deck yet? And they said no, so I was like, then he's allowed to switch, like, that's, like a tournament rule. And like, he had another, there was another thing, another thing that came up that, Went against him, but, you know, he was, again, he's just trying, he's kind of just a guy that's trying to learn how the tournament rules work, I think, and, and a little rough around the edges, but so, like, that can lead to some weird interactions, I think but, I don't know. we'll, we'll, we'll see how the we'll see how the next couple events go.

Brent: 7:29

You know, obviously, I think every person who plays competitive Pokemon is a fan of TOs being aware of what's happening at other tournaments, and like, factoring that into account as like, things come up, so I like knowing that it's on your radar, but also that like, you haven't had a negative experience, and hopefully it was a rare thing that won't happen again.

Mike: 7:49

Exactly.

Brent: 7:50

Oh, that seems really good. You wanna talk about the reveal from today? Happy Pokemon Day, guys!

Mike: 7:55

happy Pokemon Day, we are recording this on February 27th, very on brand.

Brent: 7:59

Yeah. Mike, talk to us about the reveals, because I have not had time to watch the reveals yet. All I've done is see people angry tweeting about them.

Mike: 8:07

So, one of the perks of working from home now and not being a teacher is that I could watch it live. It was right before our stand up meeting this morning, but, but, the timing worked out. So, basically, Pokemon Presents was about 15 minutes long, and this Pokemon TCG pocket, I believe it's called took up Nearly half of that 15 minutes so basically they're going to release a mobile app that is really trying to compete against stuff like Marvel Snap and maybe something like the Yu Gi Oh! Duel Links, which I haven't played, but from my understanding it's like a simplified So, it looks like from the pictures that, and the videos, you open packs, you can open a couple free packs a day, probably you can pay for more packs you will be able to trade and battle against other people, the gameplay itself looks like there might be three prize cards instead of six, the bench might be smaller, maybe like two or three the Energy looks like it probably, energy is probably not part of the deck, and probably is all in this thing called an energy zone, whatever that means, don't know exactly and maybe it'll be something like Hearthstone, where in Hearthstone you start the game with One mana, and then every turn, you have access to an extra mana. So maybe it'll be something like that with Pokemon, where, you know, on turn two, you can attach two energy. on turn three, you can attach three energy from the energy zone, or whatever. And then there'll be, there's, there'll be cards that interact with the energy zone as well. Most of the cards that they revealed looked very, very simplistic. Very few had anything except just kind of vanilla attacks like Snorlax, I think had three colorless, 70 damage, something like that. Yeah, I think that's kind of the gist of it.

Brent: 10:03

Hmm. I

Liam: 10:04

Yep, it's hilarious, bro. It's

Brent: 10:05

mean, I totally, totally understand their desire to like, I'm sure they're engineers or they're like, product manager who has no experience playing Pokemon and isn't like, a TCG aficionado. He's like, you know, some mid core game developer, product manager person. he's like, the problem with Pokemon is it takes like 25 minutes to play a game. We gotta figure out how to fix that

Mike: 10:28

Yep, that's definitely a big part of it what'd you say?

Liam: 10:33

Ehhh, it's too hard for people to pick up, man, we gotta, we gotta re restructure this whole thing.

Mike: 10:42

Yeah,

Liam: 10:43

I don't think it's a bad thing, I like,

Mike: 10:45

it's definitely geared, yeah. It's definitely geared at getting people that didn't, that. don't play the game to play the game and then maybe that transfers from the digital to, to the physical. Not that, probably not, yeah, probably not that high a percentage will, will do that, but I mean.

Brent: 11:10

And they did not announce a date for the World Championship, I've concluded from the angry tweeting.

Mike: 11:15

They did not do that either. All of the other announcements, I mean, I'm sure you saw the other big one was announcing a new Legends game, so the sequel to Legends Arceus, that's, that'll be kind of cool. And then everything else was really just like small updates to all the various games that most, most of those games I don't even know. Exist.

Brent: 11:40

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Mike: 11:42

Pokemon Cafe Remix.

Brent: 11:46

Sure, sure, sounds great. Liam, do you want to talk about your League Challenge this past weekend at all? It was a great, it was a great League Challenge, one for the

Liam: 11:56

Well, yeah, it went by very fast. I, once again, got the wrong information online, somehow. For the start time, so I showed up late to round one, so I got that round one loss, and I had to I couldn't bubble in, and then I lost round 2, so, or actually I got a bye round 2, and then I lost round 3. Yeah, my event was over. I played Pidgeot. Pidgeot's kind of fine in best of 1, not that good. But, that just kind of sucks. man. It kind of sucks. Like, in like every mashup that's not Charizard, you have to get the Pidgeot out so fast, or else you like You know, your setup, like, all of the issues, it's kind of like Chen Pao in a way, like, in that if you don't instantly set up, that miss makes it, like like exponentially harder for you to set up later, like, because all of a sudden you have to, like, worry about, you know, like, your opponents start putting on pressure, which hits your board or like board pressure, which is really, really bad. For Pidgeot, because all of a sudden you're like, Pidgeys are under attack, so you have to like you know, you have to like, start Arvenning for like, Bravery Charms instead of Forest Seals so that you can get them out of Greninja range. And then like, you know. you just have all these issues. There's like, cross switchers, and attacking pressure, and a lot of matchups, like, the deck with the Radiant Zard is geared towards trading. And so like, when you fall behind, all of, all of these issues just like, begin to compound when you don't get the early Pidgeot. And that's exactly what happened in my round 3 that I lost. I missed, like, turn 2, turn 3 Pidgeot, and then I had Sable Eye Pressure, and I, like, basically didn't get a free Arven turn because I prized the Forest Seal. And, you know Alessandro's list you should probably be playing plays 2 Forest Seal, but I basically would need to Arven 2 turns in a row to get the Red Candy and then the Ultra Ball. And yeah, I just there was too much pressure for me to set aside turns for that and I ended up, like, being really late to my setup, and yeah, I just, I couldn't get back into the game because I felt, like, way too far behind,

Mike: 14:05

Do

Brent: 14:05

And that was a League Challenge.

Mike: 14:07

any locals this upcoming weekend?

Liam: 14:11

probably. I don't know. I'll check later.

Brent: 14:14

And the question is, will Liam show up for Round 1? Because that is the hype trend right now, is to apparently be completely confused about when the tournament starts every single tournament without fail. is, that is definitely our new thing.

Mike: 14:30

I am going to a cup on Sunday. I think I'm gonna play Giratina, I think. Seems good.

Liam: 14:39

team is really good. Easily the BDAF right now.

Mike: 14:43

I think one thing that I'm kind of interested in and this, oh, this will segue a little bit into the other thing you wanted to talk about, Liam. So a lot of the best players in my area play Gardevoir. and so, I'm, I, like, i think I'm going to play Tina, but if the Gardevoir players are not playing Cresselia, so like Newchie, for example, he's not going to play Cresselia. He's just going to run his same 60 for sure, that he won the regionals with. Does Manaphy, like, actually really help in that matchup then? I feel like it would.

Liam: 15:14

No. I mean, like, in some weird scenarios, sure, But

Mike: 15:21

But it takes away Screamtail's attacking option.

Liam: 15:23

the better. Like, the Screamtail, the Screamtail's already, like, kind of shut down by the Sableye and, like, the sniping, they already have so much gust control with the countercatchers, like,

Mike: 15:35

I don't know. Like, i feel like so often the line for Gardevoir in the matchup early on, or like whenever possible is to Cresselia or Screamtail put like somewhere between 60 and 100 damage on the

Liam: 15:48

reason they did that was because you need the healthy Arcana when you don't play Jirachi. But now that you have Jirachi, you just you just smack. it. doesn't matter. You don't have to chip it.

Mike: 15:58

I guess. Yeah. I guess.

Liam: 16:01

Like, I mean, like, of course the healthy Arcana's a little bit better still, but, like It's the Manaphy. I'd rather have a good, card in my hand than the Manaphy,

Mike: 16:13

Yeah.

Liam: 16:14

especially in that matchup, man.

Mike: 16:16

Okay. All right, all right, all right. I'll think about it, more, but that is helpful. Okay, you wanted to talk about the Chien Pao Giratina matchup?

Liam: 16:24

Yeah, man. Mike says this matchup's favored. I played Tina at Elite Cup like two weekends ago and felt terrible. Which felt, like, absolutely abysmal, and I've always thought it was bad at least since like, 2023 Worlds, last

Mike: 16:43

Mm hmm.

Liam: 16:44

when I was doing testing before that, I Dude, like, how do you stop them from taking two prizes every turn? You

Mike: 16:51

This is interesting, because, yeah, thinking back to then, that's when I played the matchup the most, is in preparation for Worlds. And one of the reasons that Bradner and I both ended up on Tina, because we were both, We're both testing qi and pao as well for worlds and we kind of both independently came to the conclusion that Tina beat Chien Pao and that's like a large, it was actually a large reason why we, we decided to play Giratina. So, and then I played two Chien Pao at Worlds and I beat them both but then I haven't played the matchup too much since then. So what it, let's start with what's changed since then. Tina got,

Liam: 17:29

It's the hands,

Mike: 17:30

Tina got countercatcher, and Chien Pao got hands, Those are really the two big differences, right?

Liam: 17:35

Dude, the hand is

Mike: 17:36

the hands. is, I mean, that could be true. That could, maybe the hands is enough to like swing it. But from, from what happened before was, see, like, I don't even know. Because Chien Pao could even take two prizes with the, with the ninja turns, and it was like, fine. Like because Mm

Liam: 17:57

Like, how is that so? Like, they're taking two prizes with the ninja, you're never beating them on the prize trade, right? They have to miss a piece, right? You're basically just banking on Roxanne Sableye, right?

Mike: 18:10

yeah, for sure. Like, you would go,

Liam: 18:12

see, sometimes, I mean, every time. like,

Mike: 18:14

you can go, like, Countercatcher, Bax, Roxanne, Sableye, Bibarel. Like, that's a really good play, right?

Liam: 18:19

yeah! But, like, if they rip, like, you know, if they somehow hit the pieces that they need off of that, you always lose, right? Like

Mike: 18:29

Yeah, that, I mean, it's a lot of, a lot of stuff to hit. Like, you have to hit probably the hands off that to, to win. The other thing that came up a lot in the matchup is, and again, this could just be me playing against people that didn't manage their resources very well but like, Chien Pao needs a lot of energy to kill a Giratina, right? They need five, and so killing the second Giratina was often pretty difficult for them.

Liam: 18:56

Dude, I just like, don't know how that is. Like, they take the, they take the first two prizes, even if they're like concealed cards in every turn, they take the first two prizes and they're down like six energy. That's like being really generous. They take, they're down like six energy, and they have four SERs left, and you're like, they need ten energy to take two more prizes, and they have like four SER and three energy in deck, like, They just rip two SER back to back and they always have it, right? They always have enough energy? Like, I don't know how you run out of energy with four SER and you basically need, like, two to close out from there, right?

Mike: 19:28

Yep, yep, I mean in theory,

Liam: 19:30

I don't

Mike: 19:32

in theory, it does always work out for Chien Pao. I can just say, like, in practice you can do enough to make it hard for them, and maybe they, like, you know have to ultra ball crap away that Yeah. i don't know. but the data says the data says that qianpao is favorite So like i don't want to knock that like the data says qianpao is pretty solidly favored against tina

Liam: 19:53

I also had like, weird setup issues. Like, I guess this was a, This was one of the big points, because I think this affects a lot of the game, is how many Comfey do you go for turn one? Like, do you go for three Comfey, or just one?

Mike: 20:08

two is not an option

Liam: 20:10

Well, like, two's an option, but you know, three lends itself to the more aggressive, what is

Mike: 20:16

yeah like, turn two mirage gate Yeah,

Liam: 20:18

Yeah, like, is of course good, and like, once you bite the bullet for 2,

Mike: 20:23

yeah

Liam: 20:24

there's no point avoiding 3. But yes, if you only have 2 comfy, do you go for 2 comfy? Sure.

Mike: 20:30

i would it like it depends So much like let's say i start tina if i start tina i'm probably just getting one comfy and a bit seeking

Liam: 20:41

Sure.

Mike: 20:42

if I start Comfey, then I'm much more likely to go yeah, triple Comfey, or something like that,

Liam: 20:47

So you go for triple comfy.

Mike: 20:50

Taking a prize with Cramorant early is obviously quite good, a lot of the time. And if they like, go around it, I mean, so, Like, there's just so, there's so many ways that the, that the, that the prize trade can go, right?

Liam: 21:06

Like, they took 2 prizes every single turn, dude! Like, of course it's great if you can get them to 3 prizes. Like, I think you should always win if you get them to 3 prizes, right? You get, like, 2 Roxanne Path turns, you get to say why the Bibarel, and they don't even win if they get a switcher there. Or like, a CR off that, but like, Yeah, man, it's just like, if, yeah, so you always have to like you're never set up to hit seven on turn two, unless you bench too comfy, or throw the Tina active. In both situations, you're basically always giving up two prizes. At like, for basically zero effort, they find like four energy and they always take two. And then like, This was, this was how both games went. They, they did that, they took two prizes on turn two and on turn three, I, or like, and then I, like, return KO'd, and then on turn three they went cross switcher with the hands, and knockout on one prizer on the bench, like the Greninja usually, and then, I, yeah, and then at that point they have the fully powered up hands, there are two prizes, and, like, even if I go for the Roxanne countercatcher path, whatever with the Sableye, They rip a CR and I lose because they have the hands on the bench. And like, maybe it's fine to just bite that, but like, Yeah, dude, it felt terrible. It felt terrible. And, yeah, Stopping them from taking two Preds every turn was just, just like, impossible. Yeah,

Mike: 22:37

Maybe I'll play the matchup more and get back to ya. Hehehe. Yeah.

Liam: 22:42

bit more, like, recently, just in practice and stuff, and we've tried like, just pushing one Comfey and like, accepting being down a little bit on Lost Zone. And like, yeah, we tried benching three Confus. I don't know. It's, it's so hard to stop them from taking two every turn. Like, like, if they set up.

Mike: 23:02

Alright.

Liam: 23:02

Like, you, you often go, like, even slower than them. Like, the, like, the team inconsistency issue is, like, going slowly. Not like, you know, completely bricking, I think. It's more just like, you know, your first attack comes when they're at two prizes, but like, it's kind of okay because you've been sitting on, like, two Roxannes the entire time, right? But like, yeah, you, you're usually going slower than them, like, it's, it's very rare that you get the, like, you're, you're outpacing them. So like those two prizes, the first two prizes, and then, yeah, I'm just, it's so hard to stop now, I don't know how you got to,

Mike: 23:38

Yeah, Hands probably does change the equation quite, quite a bit. so Alright. What else we got? Let's move on.

Brent: 23:47

You know, you just added a great one to the show notes that is probably the most important thing we should talk about. EUIC made me want to kill myself.

Mike: 23:56

Yeah. so, I didn't even try. So talk us through your experience of attempting to register.

Liam: 24:05

I mean, pretty much the same as everyone else's, it just didn't go my way, I guess, like And like, you know, I think, I think basically everybody, once you, once you don't get in, you think about, like, oh, what are all the ways that I could have been there, like, one second earlier, I guess, right? And You know, I was I was, in school during the first registration and so, like, maybe, my Wi Fi was a little sketchy or something, like so, you know during the second one, I I was there at 4am, man, and I just clicked, and I guess, you know, it didn't happen, but it is what it is. Well

Brent: 24:41

which is a grave injustice, let's be absolutely crystal clear. I mean

Mike: 24:46

Yeah.

Brent: 24:48

Yeah, hey obviously it's going to be challenging to and Liam's welcome to make the counterargument, challenging to get an invite without being able to bank 100 points from EUIC, you know?

Liam: 24:59

I, I've told myself this before, man like, as long as I get into NAIC, and like, the fact that I've already gone to a bunch of regionals, like, I have ample opportunity to get my invite, it's, you know, it's totally fine, I think UIC's gonna be a really fun tournament, just because it's the first one of Temporal Forces, Temporal Forces looks like it has the Like, a ton of cool stuff. You know, EUIC, NAIC, both those are always, always really fun tournaments. They're like the largest tournaments all year, right? But hopefully in the NAIC and like,

Mike: 25:28

Mm hmm. I think that's one of the more disappointing things about missing EUIC is that it's, it is the first tournament of the new format of rotation. And that's like, that in and of itself makes it super exciting.

Brent: 25:44

You know obviously, hey, I we, we got, we got our, our sob story, which is like, gonna be hard to get an invite without, without 100 points from EUIC, and like,

Liam: 25:53

no, no,

Brent: 25:54

everything right. I like Liam's confidence that it will not be hard.

Liam: 25:56

It's

Brent: 25:57

you know, the, I mean, the other thing I would say like, a couple of things. First, I recognize they're not, they tried not to have a day two with juniors and seniors because they need the space for masters on day one. But, but like, as many people have said, there were 200 kids at Liverpool Regionals, and then, so like, maybe for one of the first times ever, juniors and seniors were wildly unable to register for EUIC.

Mike: 26:27

yeah, that's unfortunate.

Brent: 26:28

Like, kids got boxed out, and you know, my heart, like, I saw, I saw on the Facebook Pokey Parent Forums, like, my heart really goes out to this. There were, like, London local juniors unable to get into EUIC, I'm like, man, that is like, an injustice you know, I know the site, when Liam and I discussed it, he was like, I already know, you're like, and he's not wrong, I mean if we had not been able to, and so many things were different at 2014 Worlds in Washington DC, it was local to us, we were able to just walk in, we didn't need a spectator pass, like we could just walk in and do side events, and we could walk in and enter the grinder as a local, you know, And like if we had not been able to do that you know, I think, I think the The narrative of our Pokemon story arc would have been wildly different you know? So the increasing inaccessibility of Pokemon tournaments don't love it.

Mike: 27:27

yeah. Like, I was thinking about that too because I saw, I saw, did, did Nabil's younger son end up getting in, Or

Brent: 27:35

Nope, didn't get in,

Mike: 27:36

right? Yeah, so when I saw that I was thinking about this a bit, like, I wonder I wonder if you just open up juniors and seniors before masters. Like, I wonder if that's ever a consideration for them to really

Brent: 27:49

well, so the problem is they capped at 2. 28, so the question is, are you going to do a day two? Are you going to double flight it? Like, they had, they, like, I know, I know what the problem was with juniors and seniors. The problem with juniors and seniors was not just they filled the, whole place. It was They had a hard cap on, on those guys, just like they have on everything else, and the hard cap was way lower than demand, and they had to know because we just had Liverpool Regionals, they had to know it was going to be like that, you know?

Mike: 28:17

Yeah, so, I mean, you said Liverpool just seniors had 200? Or, so just seniors had 200. And then you have Charlotte, which had a day two for seniors. so, so there's clearly, you know, over 400 seniors alone that are competitive. Right? And So that's Like, and probably a higher percentage of those players would want to go to NIC than Masters, if that makes sense. So, like, let's say of those, I don't know, 450 seniors, 3 to 350 wanted to go to EUIC, and that's just, you know, the ones that went to Charlotte and Liverpool. Like, that's not counting the west coast of the US seniors. It's other places in Europe, maybe, that have seniors that would want to go, so.

Brent: 29:06

Right, right. I mean, that's, that's, there's, there's just like, obviously, it's an IC. Like, there's gonna be broader interest, right?

Mike: 29:13

and it probably means that, like, you know, those players that are 18th, 19th, 20th, for example, in North America, that were in the running for a stipend, like, if they didn't get in where, and, you know, the top 16 do, Right. They automatically get a spot.

Brent: 29:32

Right. Well, and, and, let's be clear, this is the Liam Hyatt story. This is the, like, like, just outside of Top 16 because he didn't go to, like, every single regional. And he was like, we're gonna go to EUIC, we're gonna get on track for NAIC stipend. Nope. That is, that is, like, now it's rich get richer, right?

Mike: 29:49

yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, crazy, yeah, really unfortunate.

Liam: 29:55

on that like accessibility point earlier that you may have done, um, this is why I think making ICs incredibly exclusive would be a wonderful solution. This is, this is more along the lines, like, the benefits would be more along the lines of what Jeremy's discussed in our chat, Mike, which is that we should make local events, like, local regionals, kind of, more encouraged, and then, you know, going to Australia so that you can get, like, an EUIC stipend. when you live on the East Coast. Less encouraged. This way, you know, events fill up less, people get into local er, like, regionals that are close to them. I know, like, there's a few Vancouver locals who didn't get into Vancouver. Stuff like that. You know, it's just it's a poor allocation of resources to have people flying from really, really far away to go to regionals, but people Right next there unable to get in, you just have all these regionals happen, have everybody who wants to go get in, people go to a few regionals, then they go to IC, if you do really well at regionals, you get to go to IC,

Mike: 30:59

Yeah. And there could be some, like, middle ground, too, where, like, maybe winning a League Cup gets you an invite to something or, like, day two in a regional.

Liam: 31:11

absolutely, I think, I think tiering it up like that, like, having to go to like, The lowest level events to qualify up and up and up and up and up is like a really good system to get people like really strong players to go to local level events, which, you know, makes, I think, makes them more enjoyable for everybody involved and, you know, also you know, like, like local events where there's something on the line is like something that I feel like we had like, you know, a few years ago or not a few years ago, I guess, like a while ago at this point, but has like largely faded away with like, you

Brent: 31:44

the state's callout, right?

Mike: 31:45

Yeah,

Liam: 31:46

read Cups every weekend, and like, you know, nobody really cares, right? It's, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Thanks, man.

Mike: 31:54

Yep, and it could be like, it, it, yeah, it could be like winning League Cup gets you something or just like the opportunity to register for, for something, or, or like day two in a regional, or, or maybe you need to like top four League Cup in order to register for a regional, and then you need to day two a regional to register for an IC, or something like that, I don't know, so, there could be, there's so many different ways you could take it, but maybe that is the direction we need to go.

Liam: 32:19

Yeah, these OpenICs are like, absolutely insane. Like, keep the same level of growth. Like, there's no venue that could hold all these people in like, you know, a few years time if we're growing at this rate.

Mike: 32:34

Well, the other

Brent: 32:34

Podcast listeners Nabil and I have talked about trying to rent the convention hall across from EUIC at the Excel Center, and running a Sunday tournament with a 100 entry fee and a 10, 000 prize. If you want to invest, just, just let us know. I'm pretty sure that's a slam dunk moneymaker. There be, like, 3, 000 people looking to play Pokemon on Sunday? For sure. For sure.

Mike: 32:55

the the other thing that I'm not sure about that I've seen discussed a little bit is perhaps part of the growing pains is not only the size of the venues, but the amount of staff available. I don't know if that's true. I really have no idea, but it could be for sure. Are, are you guys, did. you guys book stuff for London?

Brent: 33:15

We did. I gotta cancel everything.

Mike: 33:17

Okay, okay, okay, okay, so, so that was a joke. So you're not going and running a

Brent: 33:21

no, no. no.

Mike: 33:23

Hehehehe. Gotcha. Hehehehe.

Brent: 33:29

Unless, unless an investor rises up, I will, I will not be fronting all the money to rent out the Excel convention hall across from Pokemon. That, that seems like, a a little too high risk, no matter how incredibly slam dunk the opportunity is

Mike: 33:50

Alright, what else we got?

Brent: 33:51

And remember when they used to have regionals at, at like U. S. Nationals, like, like 2014 they had like two regionals because they didn't have enough kids with invites or whatever and they were

Mike: 34:01

yeah. Hehehe. Hehehe.

Brent: 34:04

I mean just imagine if they said EUIC is now going to have like a regionals, it's just like the rich getting richer and richer and richer, like, you don't make Day 2, you pick up 100 points, you play in a regional the next day. You pick up another 80 points, like, and the regionals, the regionals are a layup because all the good players are playing in day 2, right? It's a business. It's a business. you go.

Liam: 34:30

Also, I don't know if y'all have opened Twitter recently. I really got into it with Brent Tonneson over a take that I didn't even think people would be disagreeing with that much. I thought, that's like, probably one of my least controversial takes. Well, eh, it's somewhat controversial, but only with like the bad players. Like,

Mike: 34:51

a, what was it? I like I saw there that there was something going on, but I didn't read any of it.

Liam: 34:57

Yeah, and then same thread.

Brent: 34:58

Australian players are bad, was that Liam's take?

Liam: 35:00

yeah, here's the start of the thread. Cliff Dahlgaard says skilled players like high ceiling decks. And Liam Williams quote tweets it and says mid players like high ceiling decks, good players like winning. And then I responded with, I need to be able to outplay my opponents is an insane line I hear way too often to justify deck choices. Right? You do, right? You're just like I have to be able to outplay opponents, so I'm going to put down this deck that's absolutely insane and blows out the entire format. So that I can play this really complicated deck that has a curly draw engine that goes 50 50 into the entire format. And you know, it's like, there's no reason for that. You hear it way too

Brent: 35:41

I mean, I don't know. I feel like Liam has said

Liam: 35:43

then, no, yeah, I hear it way too often, for my father included. Yeah, my father has said those words, like, word for word, you have to be able to outplay your opponents. You can outplay your opponents by playing a really, really good deck and just beating them. Like, it's better to do that than like, you know, that's actually exactly what Azul said. He Here, Biden, he said, yeah, winning, winning more is cooler than making your wins look cool. Absolutely facts. Just win. You don't have to outplay your opponents. Just win. that's better.

Brent: 36:11

Feel like Liam may have felt differently at Baltimore Regionals, like, three years ago.

Liam: 36:16

No?

Brent: 36:17

What was that deck?

Mike: 36:18

Drink a result.

Brent: 36:18

I can't remember it. Yeah,

Liam: 36:20

Dragon Ball. Yep. And, in my preparation for that event, not once did you hear me say, Yeah, this deck sucks, but guess what?

Brent: 36:28

Its high skill cap will allow me to outplay my opponents.

Liam: 36:30

I need to be able to outplay my opponents. Yep, exactly. Yeah, Brett Tonneson took took issue with this, and he was like, Ah, you always have to play the most skilled decks. And then, like, we even got to the point where, like, I started making, like, a pretty cringe argument that was, like, kind of lost on the spirit, but more just defending exactly what I said, which is, like, all I said is, like you know, when we really got into it, like, you should be evaluating decks, like, based on their merit, not just on outplay, like, outplay potential, right? Whatever that is, like and like, sometimes, there's a what is it? There's aggressive decks that are like, you know, just beat stick decks, beat stick decks that are really easy to play, that are the best play so, yeah. He was like, no, it's never true! And I was like, dude, I like, yeah, at the end of it I was like, we can go down like literally every aggressive deck that's ever been good, and we'll see if it was the best play or not. And like, for this I started going through PTCG Legends and looking at meta shares, and I was like, wow, Lugia, Archeops, 45%. Oh my god, you know, I absolutely destroyed LAIC Day 2. And of course Brent Tonneson decided that that was the best play. And then I'm like, oh, Lugia, Archeops, man. This is an aggressive deck or whatever. He's like, no, actually, this is the high skill deck in the format. Like, what? And so yeah at the end it was just I don't even know, but clearly there's some disagreement, I guess, on what aggressive decks are, or like linear decks, but yeah man, I had no clue, I was, I was I was talking with him on there for like, it was like 3 hours dude, yeah, I couldn't believe he was sticking with it like that, bro.

Mike: 38:09

I think the truth like many things, lies somewhere in the middle probably. Like, there are probably some formats where you know, the aggressive decks and the high skill decks are, have about the same win rate. And if you play like, a more complex deck, you do have more opportunities to outplay yourself. But there are plenty of formats where the less complex deck just is a better deck and a better play.

Liam: 38:34

that's like basically what I said at the end, you know, rather than trying to like you know, get down to like the nitty gritty, which is like, you should just be evaluating the decks and sometimes It's right to play the aggressive deck. Brent Tonneson disagrees.

Mike: 38:48

Nice. Good, good yap in session. Hehehe.

Brent: 38:54

it's hard to say what that says about, like, each person, the amount of free time they had to sustain that argument.

Liam: 39:00

Yeah, dude, I talked with him a little bit afterwards about it. I don't know, what did he say? Oh yeah, he was playing 8 ball on the side and had lunch.

Mike: 39:08

Hehehe.

Liam: 39:09

yeah. He was done.

Brent: 39:12

Yeah, this reminds me of my buddy that was when he found out Liam play chess. com. He was like, I also play chess. com. Here's my rating but also I only play drunk. And I was like

Mike: 39:21

Nice. So it's not my real rating, I swear.

Brent: 39:26

Exactly! There you go!

Mike: 39:29

Alright, I think that's

Brent: 39:30

else we should talk about? How about the Azul showdown? Anything to say about that, guys? Or was it just Australians are great, Brent's already proved his greatness

Liam: 39:38

So disappointing, dude. That might be my first sports betting loss, like, ever. And of course, when I say sports betting, I haven't put money on any of it. I only put money on the the Jade Gearheart showdown. I haven't even gotten paid from that yet, bro. But. Yeah man, I can't believe it,

Mike: 39:53

I didn't really watch, so

Brent: 39:55

Yeah, same, same, same, I you know, on the one hand obviously, I love all the Australians, but yeah, it just didn't seem like the a comparable amount of righteous anger to, like, You know invigorate the community around it. But maybe that was just to invigorate me, and maybe lots of other people watching. How many viewers did they have, Liam?

Liam: 40:15

like 600,

Brent: 40:16

Yeah, so not quite as crazy as Jake Yappin versus Isaiah.

Mike: 40:23

I did get a message from Isaiah after saying that in one, in the game that they won with Guardi, the third fog crystal over the fourth level ball won them, won them the game. I don't know if that's true. I'll take Isaiah's word for it.

Liam: 40:39

Did I mess with it?

Mike: 40:40

that's always my, like, that was my, that's my big criticism of all of Isaiah's Guardi lists, is he loves three level ball, three fog. And I'm a, I'm a strict four level ball guy. So, I'm glad that he won a game.

Liam: 40:53

I make 4 level ball, 3 fog, and then I cut some garbage from somewhere else,

Mike: 40:56

to fit the other one in.

Liam: 40:58

know? I think Turo counts are at like 95 percent right now. Cards garbage. I play more consistency cards. I draw good cards. I win

Mike: 41:09

They did, they did beat the Snorlax with, with Australia did beat Snorlax with Guardia, right? But I heard that US threw.

Liam: 41:17

a chuck.

Mike: 41:18

Big, big throw?

Liam: 41:21

I I was in James's stream at the end where ba basically just listening to their voice out the whole time. And yeah, they were, they were like absolutely freaking out at the end because it was like a guaranteed lost position. You know, James was like hitting his table and like freaking out and all this stuff, he was like, Oh my god, I can't believe it, you should've listened to me! Because, you know and then, yeah, it was like, it was like You know a forced win, basically, for Isaiah and crew, and then they missed it, and then James was like, Oh, I apologize. You guys are so smart. You knew they would

Mike: 41:54

Do you, do you know, do you know exactly what happened at the end, or, or not sure? Mm

Liam: 41:58

they, so the Australians had two prizes left with Gardi. All their energy was deployed on the field. And, but they had the Tauro, and they had the Collapsed left. But those were only going to get three energy each. And then the the Americans attached a Luxurious Cape to their active When there was two prizes left, and they played Turo, they played Collapse, and then they got two prizes.

Mike: 42:22

So if they don't play Cape,

Liam: 42:24

If they don't play the Luxcape, they give up one prize to the Turo or the Collapse, right?

Mike: 42:29

and then they

Liam: 42:30

And then And then they ate the second and there's, there's no one they ate too early.

Mike: 42:36

Dang. All

Brent: 42:40

sounds absolutely magnificent. Love it to death.

Mike: 42:47

right,

Brent: 42:48

That's all we got, people!

Mike: 42:49

this is pretty

Brent: 42:49

be back next week with more stuff. I think Liam does actually have some cups this coming weekend. What are you planning on playing, Liam?

Liam: 42:59

I have no clue man. This format is Go, go check the grant meme. Not even meme, just format description. Stage four right now. Format absolutely sucks. I'm definitely not playing wearing moon. We're not going to stage five.

Brent: 43:13

I

Liam: 43:13

format sucks, man.

Mike: 43:15

Tina, play Tina, man. It's a Tina, it's a Tina angle.

Liam: 43:19

it. I lost to

Brent: 43:22

can't remember, how did, how did What happened last time you played Tina? You had, you had like one good

Liam: 43:26

Twinbow! I got bodied!

Brent: 43:28

You've had any success at Cups this season where you didn't play Guardi.

Liam: 43:33

probably not, but I haven't gone to many Cups this season. Like, I went to like two Cups where I didn't play Guardi.

Brent: 43:38

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like everywhere you played Guardi, it went okay, and everywhere you didn't play Guardi, it went super bad. But like, I don't know if

Liam: 43:44

though, dude. Guardi sucks. And like, I've also had some bad events where I played Guardi. Like Yeah, Gnom, Garde, Garde's Trash, Garde, Garde's Trash. It like, it genuinely has like, some of the worst consistency issues in format right now. That thing never works.

Brent: 44:04

Alright, alright, the John Pauls are our outro. We're out, guys..