Brent: 0:05

Welcome to the Trash Ranch podcast. It's the only podcast about the Pokemon Trading card game. It's astounding that there are not two. There's only one. It is us. Attendance is 133%. It's me, it's Liam Halliburton, Mike Che, and Cam Chano is joining the pod cam. The only person who the difference between Cam and Liam is he gets paid to think about Pokemon all the time. Liam does it for free. It's just something they throw out there. No new. No new five star no new reviews this week, but and if you leave a review, we will read it on the pod. Dragonshield sponsors us, they send us sleeves, we very much appreciate it when they do. That's excellent. Cam,

Cam: 0:49

guys, thanks for having me, thanks for inviting me, co host.

Brent: 0:54

Cam is out in the woods, it says his network is struggling. We're gonna see how it goes recording the pod. Cam, the most important question I have for you is, are you going to EUIC?

Cam: 1:06

and I'll be going to Orlando right after as well.

Brent: 1:10

You guy! Alright, so, so how are you, I think we want to spend a bunch of time talking about the play for Vancouver, because the most important thing is winning Vancouver, but how are you, are you splitting time between testing for UIC and Vancouver, are you just all in on next format at this point, because this format is brain dead and you've already solved it, or are you focused on the next thing and only testing for Vancouver, like

Cam: 1:36

so, I work at Tabletop, and we have weekly locals on Wednesday and Friday. And I've just been kind of playing the deck that I assume I'm going to be playing for the last month. And that's about as far as the testing goes for Vancouver. Everything else has been either testing EYC meta, Or testing Star Wars, which is not the topic of this, but I spend all my other time, and really the only testing I do for Vancouver is at these locals.

Brent: 2:04

Awesome. Awesome.

Mike: 2:05

Nice. Cam, you might want to just turn your video off and then it'll Give some better

Cam: 2:12

Ah, yes.

Mike: 2:13

maybe It's not too bad, but but it'll probably help a little bit

Liam: 2:19

yeah, yeah.

Mike: 2:21

Cool all right so Cam welcome. I don't know you all that well. I mean we've been friendly to each other and your friends

Cam: 2:31

yep.

Mike: 2:31

I've been in touch with a lot of my friends, like I know for example, you just recently went to Australia with did you stay with Sam or did

Cam: 2:38

We were, like, walking distant ways from hotels, but we were kind of in with each other a lot of the time, but yeah.

Mike: 2:46

Cool. Cool. Yeah. So like, for example, Sam is my oldest friend in Pokemon. I've known Sam for over 20 years. So so. I just wrote down, like, a bunch of questions that maybe over the course of the next few episodes I can ask to get to know you a little bit. If you've got any questions for me, of course, you can flip them back as well. We're really excited to have you here. So, I guess just in general, Give us your Pokemon arc. Where, how'd you start? When did you start? When did you, if you started casual, when did you make the jump into the competitive scene? And I guess also, like, where? Like, I know you're in Seattle right now, but were you always in, in Seattle or

Cam: 3:31

so when Pokemon Sun and Moon came out, the video game, it was I had not been into Pokemon in quite a while, and just something about Sun and Moon appealed to me, so I actually started playing the video game, and then started playing the game. I went to one VGC tournament, and then I kind of, I think they were in separate halls, because there was an Anaheim, and so I just walked from the VGC hall to the TCG hall now they're usually combined, and there was about five to six times the amount of people. It, at VGC, everyone's usually pretty quiet, they're all thinking, and it was very loud. and Boisterous in the TCG hall and I had played other card games growing up and I was like oh this looks pretty cool and then so I was like maybe I should try the TCG instead of VGC because making Pokemon in VGC kind of sucks. And then, the very first regional I watched was, I think, when Garbodor, Trashlanch Garbodor came out. Christopher Schumansky played Metagross. That was the very first deck I ever made in the Guardians Rising format. And I was in San Francisco going to university. And that was kind of how I got into it and how I got into the competitive circuit.

Mike: 5:00

So that's like, 2016

Cam: 5:03

2017, I think, is when I started,

Mike: 5:05

Or, wait no,

Cam: 5:07

It was like Anaheim, there was a regional, and it was like the, yeah.

Mike: 5:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 2016 worlds was in San Francisco. Yeah, gotcha,

Liam: 5:16

And Cam, how many years of card game experience in

Cam: 5:20

I'm, 30 years old now, I know, way over the hill, according to Liam, but I've been playing card games since freshman year in high school. I started out with Yu Gi Oh! and some other card games, but that's when I started. So about 17, 16, 17 years, depending on how old I was when I was a freshman.

Liam: 5:40

Dude, I think at one point he hit me with like, I've been playing card games longer than you've been

Cam: 5:44

Heh heh, close. Heh,

Brent: 5:49

was one!

Mike: 5:51

So you started with Yu Gi Oh, that was actually another thing that I wrote down cause I know at least that you played Digimon somewhat competitively. Were there

Cam: 5:58

Yu Gi Oh was like the very beginning, but that wasn't like super competitive. I was, I was young at the time, didn't do like a whole lot of traveling like I do now, but it was kind of like my dip and dip my toe into trading card games. I did Digimon, One Piece, a little bit of online magic. Played Runeterra with Kayden. So I've tried a bunch of different things, but Pokemon is the one that has stuck most.

Mike: 6:22

Nice. Did you ever play Hearthstone much? That's the only other card game I've really sunk

Cam: 6:28

I did, I did a little bit of Hearthstone, but I don't know, I felt like the way to be very competitive in that game was not always clear, or not always easy, so it didn't last very long. Heh.

Mike: 6:43

That's true. It's really the only year that I played it competitively was the, maybe like one of two years that they had a very clear cut. Here are the small tournaments. You do all the small tournaments, you qualify for the big tournament, and then you go from there. There was only like one or two years where that existed, so I feel that for sure. Okay, cool.

Brent: 7:04

I think I'm supposed to say, hashtag, add, we're all competitive Race to

Mike: 7:07

One last thing for today, just because you mentioned it, you mentioned the Star Wars card game. At the store that I run League at, the dude that is always working there, he was super hyped about the Star Wars game. He was showing me, like, the pre release decks and whatnot. Give me your thoughts, is it, do you feel like it's good?

Cam: 7:27

well, I will preface this with most card games seem really good with base set. It depends on how it evolves, but I do like that they have a lot of information about the competitive scene. It's actually very similar to Pokemon where you can get points. It sounds like it's a little bit easier to get an invite than Pokemon. They have a day two qualification, the game is good, it seems like the tournament structure is there you know, I I've been grinding it a lot, it's fun, it's fresh, it's new, we'll see if that lasts after about a year, right that's usually the test with most card games.

Mike: 8:03

Sure.

Brent: 8:04

I mean, it's hard to beat Star

Mike: 8:05

Cool. Alright, well,

Cam: 8:07

Yes. Mm hmm. Mm

Brent: 8:09

Everybody likes Star Wars lore. Like, how can you not be like, these cards are good cards, right?

Cam: 8:14

hmm.

Mike: 8:17

And it looked like, when I was first looking at it, it looked fairly, fairly simple. I don't know if simple is like the right word for it, but like easy, easy to learn, but probably has a high skill cap, which is I don't know, which is what I liked about Hearthstone, what, it's kind of like what I like about Pokemon, like the, to get, really easy to get into, but then once you get into it, like, pretty strategic

Liam: 8:43

yeah, like the, the cards are really straightforward, there's not like a ton of keywords, it's,

Cam: 8:47

Yeah, that's how it felt, I mean, my friend and I have been playing I mean, we've, my boss says we probably were some of the people who've played it the most because we've just, we play hours on end, and we even know that we're not playing perfectly, and we'll look at each other like, this was like one of the greatest sets of games that we've played, and we, we're pointing out mistakes still that we've made, so it's easy to learn, but hard to master, I think, as most of the good card games are.

Mike: 9:13

nice, cool and you said you work at Tabletop, I actually didn't, I didn't know that, so you live, like, in Seattle, and you've been working there now for

Cam: 9:21

I I moved to Seattle and I had a corporate job, which was, you know, it was good but I was kind of getting a little bit burned out of it, and I had gone to Tabletop a lot, and so Brian offered me a job, and so I started June of last year, so almost, almost that one year, but a little bit less.

Mike: 9:43

Sweet. Nice. That's awesome. you must know or be familiar with a lot of the Seattle people as well that I am really good friends with, like JP. I know he probably doesn't come around as much as he used to because of his, his kid, but yeah, JP is a long time friend. And then a lot of the people that now work at Pokemon, like Tyler Ninomura

Cam: 10:06

no J, J, yeah, no, I know all them. They come around. JP still comes around. He just brings his daughter with him. It's, it's fun. It's a, it's a good time with JP and Autumn.

Mike: 10:16

Yeah. Nice.

Brent: 10:20

JP just had like a

Cam: 10:21

Yep, that's, that's correct. I don't even know, I don't even know what format it is, I don't even want to pretend to know, but he, I think he ended up winning or getting second at his own retro format tournament.

Mike: 10:34

Yeah. He has an unbelievable amount of cards. Like, when my wife and I went to visit Seattle maybe like two years ago now, and we stayed over at JP and Sylvia's, and Kelly thinks that I have a lot of cards. And then we went into JP's house, and it's like, 50x the amount of cards that I have, like, hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of cards, like, so many old decks.

Cam: 11:04

Yeah, yeah.

Mike: 11:05

really great.

Liam: 11:07

When you say that, I imagine this guy that we used to get cards from I don't know if my dad remembers this yeah, we used to go to this guy's house, and like, We used to get cards from him because he's like a big card seller, like that was like his thing. He just sold cards and like you walk in the house and it's, it's just boxes everywhere. Like it's like every space on the floor is just boxes like stacked up cards. This guy's gonna like resell.

Brent: 11:33

Yeah, he, he was, he was very big in like the kind of like online selling boxes, like right before COVID. And yeah, like he was, he was ordering like hundreds of boxes. And his house was like crazy hoarders of just like uncracked boxes.

Mike: 11:54

That's funny. Cool.

Brent: 11:58

cards? Is it, like, I remember talking with, like, with somebody about, like, they visited PRAM once, and PRAM, it was, like, just giant piles of unsorted cards all over his house, in every room, like, everywhere you went, and, so when you say that, I wonder, like, JP's a software guy, so I assume he has a certain amount of OCD ness, where he's compelled to organize these things, but it sounds like a lot of cards.

Mike: 12:24

Yeah, I mean, there is a little bit of, Random piles in places, but for the most part, there are boxes, and they're labeled, and yeah, pretty organized, I would say. It's just a lot.

Brent: 12:35

Yeah,

Liam: 12:36

That's pretty similar to what we have. My dad used to do all the organizing for like, you know, starting like 10 years ago, the next like eight, nine years. So, like, I have, like, one year's worth of stuff that's, like, kinda all over the place, and then, like, nine years of stuff that's, like, neatly stacked

Brent: 12:52

Truth in advertising, right there, people.

Liam: 12:57

But who knows, maybe, like, when Rotation comes around or something, I'll, I'll put all that stuff away neatly.

Mike: 13:02

Alright, let's let's get into, well actually, there's a couple other random stuff that I just wanted to touch on. First of all Robin and Limitless just debuted a new deck builder today. It looks clean, it looks fresh, it connects with the Limitless tabletop, so now instead of having to import your deck over and over again, you can kind of build your deck on Limitless and then just play right from there. You can save decks both, I think, in the browser and through your Play Limitless account. I haven't tested that out yet, but looks great. It looks really awesome. This is a good time to say The Trashlanch does not have a Patreon, but Limitless does, and so if you use Limitless stuff at all, you should go support them. I've been supporting them since at least when COVID started, maybe a little bit before that. But yeah, go support Limitless. They're great.

Liam: 13:57

it's probably gonna be absolutely amazing. Robin always does great stuff on Limous. Fantastic.

Mike: 14:03

Eh. Eh. Yeah. And I know that we mostly want to talk about Vancouver and kind of the end of the Paradox Rift format, but just briefly touching on the idea of preparing for a new format. Liam and I had a conversation like a week or two ago in one of our group chats about, is it even worth it? To test this new format, when so much happens, like, the first week that the set comes out on PTCG Live, and start happening on PlayLimitless. Liam, I think you used the term Limitless Hivemind. you do you wanna elaborate at, at all?

Liam: 14:46

that, I don't, I don't know if I did, but yeah, I, like, what, what I've told multiple people now basically because, you know, I'm only prepping for Vancouver, and, like, so, you know, I asked, like, some Vancouver questioner, like, yo, dude, Temporal Forces, duh duh duh duh duh, and I'm like, help me, help me, please so, you know, I'm a little bit biased, but I, yeah, I basically just tell everyone, like, the, the number of games that people on Limitless get with, like, meta lists, and all of them have, like, a few changes they're like a few cards off meta lists, and they basically just run like, you know, they're running like a hundred person, seven round tournaments like every single night. So they're getting like, you know, 350 games a night with all of these meta lists, just throwing them at each other. And like, the data that you get from that is amazing. So far beyond that, like, everything one or two people are going to do in, like, the next two weeks. Like, you just get so many more games with these meta lists, and, like, when you're just trying to, like, understand meta lists and, like, make, like, slight optimizations, because you can't even place it in the context of the meta, really because you don't know what the meta is going to be for EYC. And, like, pretty consistently, every time there's a new format, or, like, especially on rotation, like, when people make you know, like, Paradox, Meta predictions right now, there's like tons and tons and tons of decks because nobody knows what's actually like competitively viable and like, you know, people are always arguing what's an S tier, like nobody has any clue what's good, but like consistently every time before a new tournament, you know, just like a week or two of Limitless and everybody knows what the best deck is by far, like going into that tournament, like the meta becomes super duper defined, because you're basically just running tournaments like every single day for weeks. Um, like your idea of the meta going in is pretty strong, and right now it's not, so all your preparation for like right now is just not as valuable as preparation in the future.

Mike: 16:35

I'm gonna give one from last year in preparing for UICI wanna give one argument in support of that and one argument against. So the argument in support is Lucia, Lucia going into last year's format. We, it had like a little bit of results in Japan, but not enough to really, like, when you were first looking at testing the format, it wasn't obvious that Lugia was still going to be strong. And so, like, it took me, like, I played a lot of games just with myself preparing for EUIC, and it took me, like, almost two weeks to figure out that Lugia was actually quite good. And it was my number one pick going into EUIC. the tournaments on PlayLimitless started, because then, like, two or three days of those tournaments, Lugia became increasingly successful and well known, and by the time EUIC actually came around, it was pretty well understood that Lugia was going to be one of the more popular and successful decks, and it was. So, agr like agree with that, but then you look at, like, Tord. And maybe Tord's just like the extreme outlier in this conversation, but like, he created a way better Gardevoir list than anything that was being played. So, I don't know, maybe that's just the, the Tord factor though.

Liam: 17:54

Yeah, I mean we obviously don't know when he

Cam: 17:56

I'll add my two cents to that, this. I do think that, and maybe I haven't adapted quite yet. Quick enough to limitless tournaments. I don't put always a ton of, you know merit into those tournaments. I don't know who's playing the lists or whatever. But I do think,

Liam: 18:14

Yeah

Cam: 18:14

I don't want to say that, but I do think if you're going to play a meta deck that is correct and that you can get a lot of valuable information from the meta deck. People running these things. I do think, however, if you come up with something anti meta or something that maybe people aren't testing, you need to test a lot. On your own and with your group especially if you want to keep it a secret because it is very hard to keep secrets nowadays in, in, in the current landscape of things. And if you are trying to bring up, bring something that is unique or special or not really called for, then you probably do need to put in a lot of work beforehand. In person, not online.

Liam: 19:00

For sure, I think, especially if you're trying to make, like, a new archetype that's actually, like, solid, it doesn't, it doesn't really hurt to start testing early because there's a lot of kinks with just, like, making the deck work that you have to iron out but, If you're trying to build something anti meta specifically, that's what I find is like super duper hard. And what you know, specifically Jake Gearheart's server always tries to do is like, they're trying to build something anti meta, they don't know what the meta is right now because it hasn't been defined by Limitless Events. So like, they're looking at something absolutely massive and they're like, how do we hard counter like 20 different decks? And it's just, it's just impossible. And like all the time you spend thinking about like anti meta decks when you don't know what the meta is, it's just

Cam: 19:44

To create something anti meta, you have to play Oh, sorry,

Mike: 19:49

I agree, can't,

Cam: 19:50

To create something anti meta, you first need to very well understand the meta at large, and be almost just as good at those meta decks before you create something anti meta. That's, that's kind of my thought, and I think that's a step that a lot of people skip.

Brent: 20:05

I feel like, I feel like saying anti meta for the first tournament of the year, you're like, really?

Mike: 20:10

Right.

Liam: 20:11

Everybody always says that, but it's It's I think especially with Limitless now, like it's not even like the first tournament, cause like, and people, because of Limitless, You know what so many people are gonna run because people also netdeck off of Limitless, or not even netdeck, but they just take the decks, change like two cards, going into events. Like, I think going into EUIC, you look at like the the Limitless late night or whatever the the biggest tournament is, like, that happens the week prior, and like, The meta is basically going to, like, perfectly mirror, like, the first 10 decks from that event. And, like, that's just really good information. Oh yeah, I guess the base are off. You can build an anti meta deck if you can basically perfectly predict the meta by just looking at the last late night or

Brent: 20:57

well that, yeah, I mean, if you're saying, like, you know, deck centralization will happen because Limitless just drives centralization, man oh man. Like, we're living in the second coming of Hearthstone, haven't even had a tournament already. There's only two decks people are allowed to play. Any

Liam: 21:13

I mean, I think it's pretty brutal, man, like, nobody brings anything cool, it's like 90 percent of the room is the last Limitless event, but it is what it is, and it definitely does help you prepare, too, I mean, I don't know what I would be doing if I didn't have, like, that kind of information, like, going to, like, the first event, like, you have to somehow, like, build your own meta, basically, if you don't have, like, know, the tools of the internet

Mike: 21:37

Yeah, and the validity, going back to just like the validity of the PlayLimitless tournaments, I think like once a format is, you know, like right now, the, the Limitless events like don't matter at all, right? And they haven't for a couple months now. But, the, the two weeks before LAIC, they mattered a lot. And it was really evident, you look back at like the tournaments like just a couple days before LAIC, Gardevoir, super popular, super successful, and that's what it was at LAIC. So like, I do think it's worth paying pretty close attention to, to those in like that time frame, like right before a new

Cam: 22:15

Mm hmm. Ha ha ha.

Liam: 22:19

also say, even if you're cam, and you don't look at, like, the Limitless events yourself they influence a lot of your testing, you know, if you're cam and you're basically going to locals every night or whatever, like everything that you see your locals playing, like all the like new decks or whatever, they're basically just like scraping it off Limitless, like, everything comes from Limitless now. It's just all Limitless everywhere.

Brent: 22:40

Alright, yeah, I don't think Liam's completely wrong here.

Mike: 22:43

Yeah. All right. So that's our, that's our takes on temporal forces for, for now. We'll be back with more. I don't know,

Liam: 22:53

Yeah, maybe

Mike: 22:54

weeks? Two weeks from now?

Liam: 22:55

Yeah.

Mike: 22:56

Current format

Brent: 22:56

know what's crazy is we haven't really discussed how the weekend after Vancouver, Liam and I, Liam's got spring break, we're going to be in Canada on vacation. We might not do a pod between, but oh, we'll still have another week before UIC. I was like, okay, okay, shoo,

Mike: 23:13

yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's two weeks.

Liam: 23:17

Yeah. Maybe if I do really well at Vancouver we'll do a pot anyway.

Brent: 23:21

That's, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure the last thing Liam wants to do is vacation with his family, so There's gonna be a lot of demand for that.

Mike: 23:30

So in the last couple weeks there have been two events, not in North America, still in the Paradox Reform. One in Europe in Utrecht. That was taken down by Owen Cameraman. I think the last time he won. I called him the other cameraman. Maybe he is the cameraman at this point now, I think. I think he is number one in in EU now, actually. And some other

Cam: 23:53

Ha ha.

Brent: 23:53

Shemansky.

Mike: 24:00

that we can talk about but 0 and 1 with Mew, Mew Mew and then there was a regional down in Brazil. I'm not 100 percent sure how to say it, Goanya, Goenya won by A Limitless Grinder, Marcos Cifuentes and he had some results I think before the online era, but I know he's played quite a lot online as well winning with Liam's support. Favorite decks, Snorlax, Pidgeot, and then also quite a lot of interesting results to potentially talk about. And so those will inform our discussion looking into Vancouver. So, let's start off with the Snorlax, Pidgeot, Liam. We had a, we had a win, and it got what, like top, oh, top 8 in in Utrecht. What are your thoughts on Snorlax Pidgeot right now?

Liam: 24:52

I don't think, I don't think the deck's good, but I guess it keeps doing well, and like, yeah, I don't know how, like, I'd really want to play it, but the deck is like, such a brick. At least in my experience, man, I don't,

Mike: 25:08

It is interesting how it's, it's kind of the consensus, at least from these two results, is this Fire version with Chi Yu and

Liam: 25:17

Yeah, Fire's definitely best.

Mike: 25:19

Yeah, I think that's the way to play it for sure.

Liam: 25:21

Yeah, like, compared to San Antonio, when I initially played Pidgeot, Where we had the more straight, lean version was less Tina. Tina was like, not really seen as the number one deck, I think, going into San Antonio. And Roaring Moon was basically non existent. Now, there's a ton of Roaring Moon, it's probably gonna be the number one deck at Vancouver. There's a ton of Tina, maybe number two. And, and those matchups are really only good with Radiant Charizard. So you just, you basically have to play the Radiant Zard. Radiant Zard kinda sucks, like, It's, yeah, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't really mesh with the deck super well, because like, I, I mean the, the card, the card is just not very good. Like, it, it, it's not a piece that lets you like, stretch at all. And like match up other matchups, like gar devore or something like that, like, or, or against chars are like the, the card is just no good. But yeah, I mean it's, it's really needed for, tina and Roaring Moon. You have to play all the fire energy now, and like, It doesn't suck suck, but it's not that good. At least in my opinion.

Mike: 26:28

Cam, have you played

Cam: 26:29

I have played a decent amount of Snorlax Pidgeot. Liam almost got me to change decks last second, I believe, at that exact regional that he played it at. I would say, and this would be a question for Liam, Do you think the deck, and I feel like it does, Does the deck do well because people don't know how to play optimally against it, and is that why it's still doing well after all this time, even though we know the lists and stuff like that? It's just

Liam: 27:00

No, yeah, for sure, nobody tests against that deck. Nobody tests against that deck. I don't know why, but nobody does.

Brent: 27:05

Testing it, it sucks. That's why, everybody knows!

Liam: 27:08

yeah.

Mike: 27:08

Yeah.

Brent: 27:09

I

Cam: 27:10

With Polaris, who is

Brent: 27:13

mean, if somebody flips over Snorlax on the ladder, you're like, onto the next game people. Onto the

Cam: 27:17

test with Polaris, and he's

Liam: 27:20

That's actually exactly what happened. I hit down

Cam: 27:22

And he's one of the better seniors in the division and by turn 5 against Snorlax Control whenever I play it, he just gets up from the table and he's like, yeah, I'm done. I'm over this. I'm good. And just walks away. So, yeah, I'm sure that's how most people, you know, act with Snorlax Control testing.

Liam: 27:41

I get tilted playing inside deck. That deck is like really annoying to play with. Like, if you don't just like draw the nuts and they go a little slow, like you, you just, mean, you always get rolled dude. That deck is super good. But it bricks a lot. It bricks a lot. Like, yeah, it bricks a lot.

Brent: 27:58

Before we go deeper there, we should just go right back to, Cam, you're the new guy? What's the play for

Cam: 28:02

Oh God, then I have to give up my play. Well, this is not a secret for anyone in Se

Brent: 28:08

This

Cam: 28:08

This is not a s

Brent: 28:10

Yeah, exactly, the good news is, it isn't like

Cam: 28:13

No, no one cares with Cameron. Cameron's having a terrible year, so who cares what I say. Everyone in Seattle

Brent: 28:20

When you start telling us you're playtesting with Tord or Azul, then everybody will be like, whoa, Cam. But until then, we're just four guys recording a podcast, you know?

Cam: 28:29

So, it's not a secret for anyone who goes to Tabletop or, you know, has gone to Tabletop the last month. I've been playing a very standard Miraidon list. I think it's Kevin Kruger's list 28th from Knoxville if I'm not mistaken. I've maybe tried a couple different things from that. I do a lot of coaching. I'm just around the game a lot. Just playing a very simple and easy deck that I know that I cannot mess up in round 1 or round 15. I mean, I can mess it up, but just maybe not as bad as some of the other decks. And I've been almost making top cut every single time that I play with it at Locals. Which, you know, it's Locals, but we have like 30 to 40 people, which is like a decent amount for Locals. And it's just very easy, and you can kind of just sit there and watch your opponent make misplays, and then you just punish them for it, because the deck is relatively autopilot experienced. Except for some certain hard, you know, certain decisions maybe that are not as easy, but I've been really liking that, and outside of the Charizard matchup. It feels like it has really good matchups across the board.

Mike: 29:40

So you're the one, you're the one putting Maridon in Liam's

Cam: 29:43

My bad, my bad.

Liam: 29:45

are you on that dude? I, I think everybody, I think I've been saying this for a while, but. I like at, at this point in the game, maybe it's not even this point. Maybe I was just too young earlier in the game to, to understand what was going on. But like, I brain dex, like, I don't, I don't even think they exist. Like, it's, it's just, it's so hard to, to sequence everything, right? Because there's, there's like so much card draw, there's so much c there's, there's just so much stuff happening. In any given game, it's really, really difficult, no matter what deck you're playing, I think, to get everything right. And, at least for me one of the, like, moments that, like, really hit me is if you haven't before, you should watch, like, Jesse Parker or John Walter play, like, Miridon or Roaring Moon. Like, Those guys are making, like, slight optimizations that I've, like, basically never seen, like, any other Miraidon or Moon player make. And, like, you know, they have the results to show for it. They have, like, regional finals or whatever, and, like, multiple top 8s on those decks. And, like, you know, I think it goes to show that, really, even with, like, the braindead decks, there's a lot of optimization to be made and a lot of results to be had if you're able to make

Cam: 30:52

Yeah, I think a good kind of to go along with that, it's very interesting when people, like at my locals, they're like, how are you even doing anything with this deck? When I play it, I break or I don't do well, and it's just interesting to, like, give an opening hand to someone and say, what are you peony for? Here, let me, let me see what you peony before I tell you what I peony, and it just, answers can vary vastly off of two cards that you would grab off peony, which typically would seem, I don't know, most people would be like, oh, that seems obvious, you just grab a generator and something else, or something like that, but it's not always that straightforward, and a minor misplay there can just Cascade throughout the rest of the game, for aggressive decks.

Mike: 31:34

So how do you guys reconcile playing, if you want to play Maridon, why has it been doing so bad?

Liam: 31:42

I don't know, dude.

Brent: 31:45

Yeah. I, I liked how Liam was like, moron's proof that you can, you can really innovate with bad decks.

Cam: 31:50

Why has it been doing so bad? I would say because Charizard is, if you don't know the line, it's, it's really bad. If you have the line, A line, it's only, like, only regular bad, but I think the Charizard matchup with a ton of people, a ton of people playing Charizard, it, that makes it bad. I actually think if you don't play correctly against Tina. The matchup is I think a lot of people think the matchup for Tina is very favored. I think the matchup for Moridon is actually it's it's it's favored for Moridon, but you have to play it correctly. And then So I think that might be also something that maybe is swaying results if you're not playing the deck right. And then I think also, if you don't hit the turn one hands against Gardevoir I think the matchup is actually bad. It becomes favored to bad pretty quickly.

Mike: 32:54

Hmm, interesting. Even like turn two hands you don't think is

Cam: 33:01

if you're going second and you don't get the turn to turn one hands, And then your opponent is able to Mirage Step, and then you take two prizes, at that point, it's probably a little too late. And I think most Gardevoir players would say, Ah, I'm, I'm fine, if they Iron Hands me after I Mirage Step.

Mike: 33:22

Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense for sure. Is the, is the Charizard line, do you, like I remember seeing Seijin Park, his list was quite different, but he was talking about how you just kind of chill with Raichu, and you like power up whatever Raichu's first attack is, like do you kind of, is that like a good line with, with the Peony

Liam: 33:44

I don't think you can do that anymore. Choice Belt's like, way too popular on Charizard lists.

Mike: 33:50

Sure, sure, sure, sure, that makes sense.

Liam: 33:53

Yeah, I think Chilling was like, it was a really good line when Cam played Maraenon to San Antonio, but at this point, like, literally every Charizard list is playing like, Choice Belt and Countercatcher or something, along those lines, which is like, pretty bad. Because, yeah, it's, yeah, they just always get the knockout for two prizes on on turn two. But, I think, I think what Cam was saying about, like, Tina and Charizard when you're playing Maraenon into those matchups, like, the defining mistake a lot of people make is that they just, they just, like, take knockouts whenever they can. Because they just, you know, they just assume that Maraenon's like a, like a run it down deck, take knockouts, blah blah blah blah blah, and just try to go as fast as you can. But the deck is, like Yeah, I think both those matchups are defined by like, finding the right turn to just pass, and prepare to go like 2 2 2.

Mike: 34:48

Makes sense. It's like something in general against Charizard that I'm surprised people still don't fully understand. Like, I was just playing, we were testing a little bit of post rotation, me and my friend, and like I was playing Chi and Pao into Charizard, and I went first as Chi and Pao, like turn two, I could have like took a single prize KO, and I was like, why would I do that? That seems very stupid. Like, let's just wait.

Liam: 35:13

Mhm.

Mike: 35:14

cool.

Liam: 35:15

a lot of comeback stuff in the game right now, like it's, you have to be like very cognizant every time you go ahead.

Mike: 35:22

for sure. Some of the other, I'm just gonna list briefly the weird stuff that happened down in Brazil. Palkia got second. Kloff got top four. The Ente Valiant with Bibarel list. It's not the exact 60 as Tyler Matthews, but that got top eight. Two Roaring Moons in top eight, not super crazy. So that's like some of the weird stuff. And then from Utrecht, obviously Tord had his deck. In top four. I don't know if we really need to talk about that. I know he just did a podcast episode with Lake of Rage. So if you're interested in a deep dive into Towards Deck, you can go listen to that. Do you, so one question though about it, Vancouver is multiple weeks after. Utrecht. Like, I wouldn't assume anyone would have brought Tord's Deck this past weekend to Brazil, but do you guys think anyone will try to take Tord's Deck and maybe change a few cards and play it to Vancouver?

Liam: 36:28

Not a lot of people, but there's definitely gonna be someone.

Cam: 36:32

I would say,

Mike: 36:34

And do you think

Cam: 36:35

probably not, unless you're one of the top 1 percent players in the world, and you're maybe close to Mirage Step. You know, or within arm's length of towards skill level. Otherwise, I'm probably not too worried if I play against the deck.

Liam: 36:50

That deck's trash. That deck's trash.

Brent: 36:54

I mean, how, how, I mean obviously toward top fours with ease with the, with that deck, but like how much is that, that deck, like believe in the heart of the cards versus like just the highest skill cap. And that's why you have to be toured like

Liam: 37:07

I

Cam: 37:08

think,

Liam: 37:10

like, the deck's really bad.

Cam: 37:11

I don't know if the deck's really

Brent: 37:13

And I feel like it's a

Cam: 37:14

But I think a deck like that also benefits from being not known beforehand. So I think he won on stream where, against a Gardevoir player in round three, and he won game one. Because, I think he just hit everything he needed, and then game two he was struggling, if I remember, to get any semblance of anything started. His opponent took five prizes, he was still at six, and then all of a sudden he just maw wiles, and then the guy, like, turned to two turns later, he's like, Oh, I, I just scooped. And, like, that probably doesn't happen anymore, if you, like, like, You know, play against that deck or you're not gonna just blindly put down stuff because you know that deck has mawile now and so Wins like that that I'm not saying that like TOR didn't work for they just don't Fall into your lap as easily anymore.

Liam: 38:06

I, I also think like the Americans are like filthy with the Touros man. Like, I, I swear every guard of war I sit across is gonna be playing Turo in their deck. And that's why I wanna play like, meite on or something, not Snor wax, because I, I know every, every guard of wars gonna have a Turo. And like, I just, I just don't want to deal with that. Like they're, they're playing a stinky card so that they can beat me if I play Snx. So like, why would I play Snla and like, you know, I'm not gonna play mole either. All that junk. They're always playing Tauro. I cannot believe that Taurod hit a Gardevoir not playing Tauro, like maybe it's like Oh, it's like a 50 50 or something like Tauro's like 50 percent play rate, but dude, it's it's everywhere. I see it everywhere.

Brent: 38:47

'cause you don't believe

Cam: 38:50

will say that I've heard some people I've, I've heard some people at that I think are good players have talked about Inteleon slash Metacham in Charizard as an out for Gardevoir. Maybe you cut some of the other stuff like Urshifu and just maybe a little bit more of a, you know, Normal Charizard lists, but with those texts, you can kind of beat Gardevoir by yoga looping and then taking another big knockout afterwards. So that might be something that we see maybe pop up in Charizard.

Liam: 39:23

Exactly, that's why the deck doesn't suck man. It's got four candies, Zards, four VIPs, Charmander's like it's like fine But a lot

Mike: 39:33

is enough. Good cards.

Liam: 39:34

of bad cards there. Yeah What is it? Oh yeah, I was gonna say, on Gardevoir and Tauros, I want to congratulate whatever the Gardevoir player was. Who, like, I think, like, top four, or no, they top eighted after going, like, 9 0 day one this past weekend. They played, like, 14 ball cards or something,

Mike: 39:56

Mm-Hmm.

Liam: 39:56

no garbage. Like, it was really good. Just absolutely amazing lists. Congratulations to whoever that was. Well deserved finish. Amazing stuff.

Mike: 40:08

Andre. Yep. Yeah, this list is pretty nice for sure. One, one other comment about Vore List. We didn't really see it in the Brazil tournament, but for sure in Europe. Well actually funnily enough, like there, there was that one top eight in Brazil, but then. Both in Europe and in Brazil, 9, 10 were both, 9th and 10th were both Gardevoirs. So like Gardevoir, Like had some really nice results, but just like just outside of cut But in in Europe all of them I think all three that just missed cut played to Avery None of the ones in Brazil, but but the ones in Europe did and I think it's funny looking at of the arc of Gardevoirless over this format because They kind of started out with this heavy Avery build at LAIC, right before LAIC, and then Miraidon was such a bad matchup, Avery was terrible in that matchup, so we started dropping the Averys and playing like More research, some workers for the Tina and the Paths, and now we're kind of coming back to the Averys with Moridon being less popular and whatnot, which, which I think is funny.

Liam: 41:27

Chenpao still won.

Mike: 41:29

Yeah, right. That

Liam: 41:32

No, he went with Fusion Mew this time, I

Mike: 41:33

yeah, yeah, he won, but there was a top four Chien Pao

Liam: 41:36

4 champ, huh?

Mike: 41:38

yeah, in both, in both tournaments, there was a top four Chien Pao.

Liam: 41:42

Yeah, no, the argument for Avery's terrible. That card's awful. It's awful.

Mike: 41:46

I don't particularly like Avery, for sure. Speaking of Chien Pao, the Chien Pao list that did well in Brazil got 3rd place and 11th place, same 60. A little bit different than what we have seen previously. It ran 2 Iron Hands and 2 Latent Energy. Only 2 Chien Pao. and it ran a Lumineon. And, anything else interesting? No Iono, and it ran a Boss. So, it ran a Lumineon, a Boss, 2 Iron Hands. So, just kind of a slightly, slightly different way. I mean, it's the same way to play the deck, but some slight changes. Pretty cool. Alright we don't have, I don't know, maybe got like 5 10 minutes left. Do you guys, do any of the results from either of these tournaments really affect how you are thinking? Or, or, and if they do, how?

Cam: 42:38

Unfortunately,

Liam: 42:40

I guess I'm respecting Fusion

Cam: 42:41

For me, no, it really doesn't, I think. I, I, I would say that it's actually, I'm someone who has played Mew a lot over the last maybe last season, this season not so much, and a lot of people have, you know, like, hey, one last ride with Mew, and all that kind of stuff, seeing it win, right before Vancouver, actually almost eliminates it from, you know, the game. And maybe this is just me overthinking it. It just eliminates it from me, like, really considering it, because Mew is kind of like the Nightmarch, right? It does well when you're not expecting it, and then when it does well, it, and, you know, people are ready for it, and you got Drapion, like, that's when it doesn't do as well, in my opinion. And so any kind of semblance or, like, of maybe wanting to play Mew is now out the window for me.

Brent: 43:33

This is the same logic I feel like I hear when I hear, when I, when I watch Liam try to manipulate the meta with this Snorlax is bad, Turo's a bad card, like, mojo that he's throwing out. Just straight meta manipulation.

Liam: 43:45

Yeah, no, I would never play Mew myself, but I think, I think more people will play it than bombed out again. It's still gonna be super duper low. But I have Owen's List built now though. I like have an actual copy of it built, so I guess I care about it that much.

Mike: 44:05

Last time there was a regional in the Northwest was Portland, and Mew did very good. It was like, probably the best NA showing for Mew this season. does that also play into your thoughts about Mew?

Cam: 44:21

I think the thing that also turns me off from you is the addition of Spear Tomb into Tina. I think that is something that has come along rather recently from Bradner and a couple other people. And that probably wasn't Up around back then, during Portland, it makes the Mew matchup so favorable for Tina, and with Path and Spiritomb, like, and along with Charizard, like, I You know, I mean, maybe, but I just feel like the meta is even worse for it now. But for whatever reason, it does well in Europe.

Liam: 45:02

Crazy stuff over there, man.

Brent: 45:04

Yeah, I like how Mike implied that there was like a Northwest meta mojo. Like, that used to be a thing, right? Like, West Coast regionals used to be like a

Cam: 45:12

I mean, we did have, I think, a Darkrai, I think a Darkrai did well on a West Coast regional. Maybe not this season, but past seasons. Like, yeah, West Coast still has some weird stuff going on but maybe not as weird as this. Pass.

Brent: 45:25

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I, I, I dig it. I dig it. It's the

Mike: 45:31

mean, you have Yeah, it is the culture, and like, you have some, some players that don't play that much, but are very good and they'll show up, like like Stephan Tobacco, like, he came, he went to Portland, played Gardevoir with TM Devolution in the list, like, what? What are you doing? And he top 16ed or something like that. So, like

Cam: 45:51

the, the West Coast thing right now, I don't know, like, I know that Seattle's not everything on the West Coast, or, or Portland, Oregon, but what I've seen a lot of is Goldango and Roaring Moon, for, for what that's worth. I mean, that's probably the two popular decks in general.

Liam: 46:08

Yeah, dude, Gold Dango is the most West Coast deck

Cam: 46:10

It is played by a bunch of people locally, that I've seen, and a lot of people have tried it.

Mike: 46:16

Sounds like a lot of free matchups to me.

Brent: 46:19

ha ha!

Mike: 46:21

So I know we still have, well, maybe we can do like meta predictions next week a little bit. But just looking at these past two regionals, Roaring Moon was, Roaring Moon, Gardevoir, Charizard were the, oh and Giratina. Okay, Gardevoir, Charizard, Roaring Moon, Giratina were the top four in different orders of day two for both of those tournaments. I guess probably would expect the same. And, like, when you look at the meta percentages, they're all, they're all, like, pretty close at this point. Like, they're all, like, you know, 10, somewhere between 10 and 15. Long, long gone are the days of Charizard being almost 20%. So, I would expect, I personally would expect probably that. To stay the same, more or less.

Cam: 47:14

I agree, and I think something, I know we're, we're past that topic, but why use, why has Moridon done, not done as well? I think people have turned in yellow Moridon for black Moridon, which is Roaring Moon, And I think people are like, that same concept of being aggressive, except now you don't take like an auto loss Charizard. I mean, it's probably still not great, but it's, it's probably better than Moriartyn's matchup ever was in Discharizard. So I think that's also maybe why you see less Moriartyn, because that shift to a different, slightly different aggressive deck.

Mike: 47:50

yeah, that makes sense. You're just kind of like, plus minus on some different matchups, like Moonsworce vs. Garde, a little bit better vs. Zard, etc. Cool. Alright, anything else for this week?

Brent: 48:04

Liam, Liam, you wanna, you wanna,

Mike: 48:06

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Brent: 48:07

gash your Twitter real quick?

Liam: 48:08

I'll do some self promo. I've recently started a new Twitter account. It's called PTCG Puzzles. I'm basically going to be trying to upload, you know, Pokemon puzzles that are to encourage people to, like, critically think about their sequencing and tactics within the game. And I'll be, I'll be trying to post there somewhat, somewhat frequently. It's really hard to come up with this kind of stuff so, you know, if you If you are ever in a game and you have an interesting position that you don't know or are not completely sure how to sequence correctly if you want to send it to me on Twitter either account, I will, I will give it a look over. And if it's, if it's really something cool, I, I would love to post it. That's,

Brent: 48:49

so, Cam and Mike, here's the question I had for Liam when we were talking about this earlier. Are there other games that have this, like, concept of PokePuzzle? Like, I recognize one difference between, like, Pokemon and Magic. Like, Magic, you're like, I'm gonna draw one card. So, like, how complicated could the puzzle be? Like Pokemon has this whole thing where you're just like, drawing cards and cards and cards and cards and cards, so, so like, that concept of like, there's a lot of cards and a lot of sequencing like that is a little bit, maybe, novel to Pokemon? I just don't, I mean, I don't pay attention to a lot of other games, so you guys tell me, is this

Cam: 49:22

I have seen something similar ish. to in one piece because there if anyone who knows anything about one piece there's cards that have like counter power so if you attack into a leader and it's at 5 000 you can dump a card for an additional 2 000 power and so the attack doesn't really go through anymore and so i've seen puzzles kind of generated around that and like What are the chances that your opponent has this counter power in their hand or how much do you swing for and, and, and, and apply the dot. I think it's not, maybe not like the drawing sequencing part, but maybe just sequencing in a different method in card games that don't draw a lot as Pokemon.

Brent: 50:04

Yeah, yeah, I sense that like, this like, PokePuzzles thing is a little bit unique ish to Pokemon, which is interesting.

Liam: 50:14

Somewhat, yeah.

Mike: 50:15

For sure.

Liam: 50:16

I mean, it's obviously a really poor ripoff of, like, chess puzzles, but,

Brent: 50:21

Yeah, that's a fair point, that's a fair point, ChessPuzzles is the GOAT.

Mike: 50:26

It's harder to do in Pokemon because of the randomness. aspect of it, for sure.

Liam: 50:32

I, I mean, I, I think it's just the like, the, the overload of information, like, people, people want access to, like, the entire discard, the entire deck, and, like,

Mike: 50:41

Yeah. So you have to design puzzles that don't require literally every piece of knowledge.

Liam: 50:47

super difficult. Yeah, it's, it's really hard. Because I mean, yeah, like the game's like best positions and like you know, coolest patterns and stuff are typically like all over the board. I have a lot going on.

Brent: 51:00

Yeah, that's I think part of what makes a good Poké Puzzle interesting is you have to do ten things, right? If you only had to do three, like, how interesting is the puzzle? And that's like, obviously the thing that makes chess puzzles amazing is you have to find the moves, but there's also this concept of like forced moves by your opponent where you're like, when you do this you're gonna get to do these like six moves in a row because he, there's no alternative play that he can make, right? Alright, guys, let's let's declare victory for the week, and we'll be back next week with whatever the meta manipulation we have planned for Vancouver is.

Cam: 51:34

Play more Garde.

Brent: 51:35

be, it'll be serious go time. The John Pauls are our outro.

Liam: 51:39

Yeah.