transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Energy Podcast on this week's episode. We got plenty to talk about, we're gonna kick it off by talking about Pokémon's official statement regarding what happened at the Orlando Regional Championships. We will take a look at a couple new cards, mainly Mega Darkrai EX. We will of course have guessed that flavor text, everyone's favorite segment of the podcast, and then we're also going to spend a good bit of time here talking about the Prague Regional Championships, which are coming up this weekend, the first tournament of the post-rotation format, Perfect Order, the G Block rotating, lots of very exciting things to look at this weekend. And then we will of course have our bonus episode exclusive to YouTube channel members and Spotify subscribers. My name is Chip Richey, joined here as always by my friend and co-host AzulGG. Though I don't know if I should use the word friend after the last iteration of Guess That Flavor Text, because it was just mean. It was just mean.

Speaker 2:
[01:08] That one was pretty brutal. I didn't even see any comments on the YouTube. There's usually comments like, how did you guys not guess that one?

Speaker 3:
[01:13] It was so obvious because of this and the other.

Speaker 1:
[01:15] Most people are like, how? Like, why? How? Yeah. I don't think anyone got that one last week.

Speaker 2:
[01:21] Maybe the hardest, Guess That Flavor Text of all time? It might be. It was a bad one.

Speaker 1:
[01:26] What's up, Azul? How are you doing, buddy? How's your last couple of weeks been?

Speaker 2:
[01:31] Yeah, for anyone who wasn't aware, I was supposed to go to Chips. Didn't end up doing that. I did take most of the week off from streaming still. A lot of eSports and sports I was watching.

Speaker 1:
[01:43] You watched some basketball?

Speaker 2:
[01:45] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[01:45] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[01:45] I watched basically every game over the weekend. I didn't stream at all over the weekend. I streamed Friday. I didn't stream Saturday or Sunday. So I watched all those games because they're all on Prime as well, which is like super nice. And I was hoping I was hoping that means that there's going to be more playoff games on Prime, but there hasn't been one since. So I don't know what the schedule is like for that, which is honestly that's like one of the most annoying things about play basketball is like, where can I watch it?

Speaker 1:
[02:06] Like I think they're all on prime time TV now. So like you should be able to just watch them. Like if you have TV or something, you should be able to watch them all. And if you don't, you could like get it for the next couple of months.

Speaker 2:
[02:16] Yeah. OK. OK. Yeah. Because I wasn't like sure like that's one of the most annoying things about keeping up with because I actually even I thought like it was going to like the last season for basketball. I was like, man, I might just like try and watch the regular season stuff. But like figuring out the time, this is too much. I'll stick to the playoffs. I'll stick to the playoffs. I can handle the playoffs. But then also for any of those fellow e-sports enjoyers, a lot of good Counter-Strike over the weekend. I've actually been really enjoying watching Counter-Strike recently. I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about. But watching Vitality's dominance...

Speaker 1:
[02:52] I know that people make casinos around the loot boxes that come in those things.

Speaker 2:
[02:57] That is a very unfortunate part of the ecosystem of not just... Well, mostly Counter-Strike e-sports. The amount of gambling that's involved in all that stuff is really unfortunate. And it almost feels like it's one of those things where it's like... You kind of can't... They're too far. If you pull it out from under it, everything just instantly collapses. So, yeah, that is a big unfortunate part of the space in... Not all e-sports, but Counter-Strike at the very least. Yeah, so that's what I was doing over the weekend. But still having a ton of fun with the format in general. I guess it's been more than just a weekend, but this weekend specifically. Still been loving just playing the game. I've been seeing a lot of people being like, I don't like this format, but dude, I feel like there's so... I'm someone who's like, I'm playing every deck, right? Like I'll play a deck for like three or four hours on stream, then play a different deck, play this deck in a tournament or whatever. I feel like every deck has so much depth and still stuff to figure out. I've just been enjoying the experience of just like that. And maybe if I was someone who just played with one deck for a week in a row, I would maybe feel the same way some other people do about the format. But for me, I've just been loving the format. But maybe it is because I am hopping from deck to deck. And if I just played Dragapult for a week, I'd be like, OK, this format's not. But I think we all knew that. We all knew this format was not going to be as good as last format. But I think that's also fine. Like maybe some people are just coming to that realization. Like people were hopeful or didn't even really think about it. And now that they're playing this format, they're like, oh, yeah, last format was better. But I think we talked about it a lot. Last format was a really good format for a really long time. It wasn't even just a format. It was a really good period of high level complex Pokémon TCG play. And we knew we were going to get a downgrade with rotation. But I don't think the game has fallen off a cliff or anything. So I don't really understand the sentiment that I've been seeing, not from everyone, but from some people as far as that goes. And then I was able to register for NAIC as well, was able to get there on the first wave. So my will be my third major of the year.

Speaker 3:
[05:00] How many majors have I been to?

Speaker 2:
[05:02] One, two.

Speaker 1:
[05:02] I think you've only been to Toronto.

Speaker 2:
[05:05] Yeah, so I went to Toronto. I'll be at Melbourne, and then I'll be at NAIC as well. And I just want to unfortunate thing with that, because we don't plan on talking about it long, is that it does seem like it's going to be the same number as last year. It looks like the numbers are lining up to be the same. So it'll be smaller than EUIC this year, which will be the first time ever that NAIC won't be the biggest event of the year.

Speaker 1:
[05:29] Yeah, it seems like it's very much a space thing, right?

Speaker 2:
[05:32] They probably have the exact same halls as last year. They probably have the exact same setup, I would assume. So they just kind of booked the same setup two years in a row. And I mean, it's one of those things where it's tough. Like, I think it's the known secret that it seems like they booked with the convention center for like three years, right? This is the third year of whatever. We'll see what happens, though, going into the next year. But I think we've had the same space all three years in a row. I think it got bigger between the year before last and last year, right? I think it went up. There was a bigger increase, but maybe this year and last year, they had the same amount of hauls booked or whatever. So that's unfortunate because we're hoping, I mean, breaking the 4K number would have been cool to get that extra round for day one, the biggest tournament of the year as expected. It seems like those things are probably not going to happen, but who knows? Maybe they'll find some space and throw out a third wave at some point. We'll have to wait and see. But it is seeming like NAIC is going to be second biggest. It feels like it's biggest in terms of the field, but it won't be biggest in terms of the player number, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[06:32] It certainly could be, right? It's only held back by the cap, by the space, because I mean, it sold out instantly. Once again, both waves, it was gone right away. It seems like it was even worse for VG, because there's a lot of extra excitement around VG right now because of champions.

Speaker 2:
[06:51] It is actually, that's something that's interesting in the video game. It felt like the video game, and I don't know, comments that can correct me if I'm wrong, Chip, if you have more info on this, but I feel like the video game has fallen off recently in terms of its hype at tournaments. I could be wrong on that, but I feel like there was a lot of hype, not like the last season, but it feels like it has dweaned or waned a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[07:11] This is just kind of the normal VG cycle, because it's like between games, right?

Speaker 2:
[07:16] Yeah, and we have new sets throughout the whole, the game is like always hype and changing for the TCG, but that does make sense, I guess, for the VGC. For like the more casual competitive audience, it's like, do you really want to go to a regional, playing the same game, or are you just going to wait, you know, wait for champions, wait for the next big thing? So it does make more sense for them. We kind of have a good TCG, I guess, as far as that goes. We like you were saying, like, NAIC could be huge, could be so much, EUIC as well. So that's the one comment I want to make. EUIC could also be way bigger than it was this year even. So like theoretically, if this is that third, the end of New Orleans, then I'm excited to see what they are able to do with next year's NAIC.

Speaker 1:
[07:58] Hopefully, we're somewhere that can facilitate way more. VG numbers could be insane with Champions if it continues to do well. But TCG, we keep pushing the boundary every single year of what we can fill. We're actually filling the boundary. We are at the boundary continually every single year.

Speaker 2:
[08:19] Always hitting the limit. Same thing with EUIC as well. I wouldn't be surprised if we stay in London, but hopefully, they're able to accommodate more next year. We'll see. But what about you, Chip? What have you been up to the last couple of weeks?

Speaker 1:
[08:30] Yeah, so like you said, you were supposed to come out to record some videos for the second channel this week. Unfortunately, we did last second have to cancel a trick as everyone in my house, except for me, got sick the last couple of days before you were supposed to go. So before you're supposed to come. So had to cancel last second, which was a bummer. Everyone got over it within a couple of days, but was not. It would not have been a fun environment for you, I will say, coming into that. And you're also someone who hates getting sick. And I feel like you are like also you get your low key like worse than my toddler at getting sick. Like when you go to a tournament, I feel you like 90% of the time come home and are sick.

Speaker 2:
[09:09] So yeah, it happens like too often. I don't know. I feel like part of it is like me being more conscious of it, though, like hand sanitizer, washing hands. Like if I am more conscious of it, I feel like I do OK. Even like stuff like remember to drink a lot of water while traveling, like stuff like that. But I feel like usually I'm just not super conscious of that stuff. And that's why I get sick all the time when traveling. So it's just something I got to like be more conscious, be more...

Speaker 1:
[09:36] Your immune system has gotten weaker with the less traveling. You've just been staying in your room, streaming all the videos instead of going to them, honestly.

Speaker 2:
[09:42] I guess there could be something with that. I don't know. I'm trying to like remember like back in the day, like when I would travel like back to back or even like back to back to back weekends. I don't know if I would get sick that often. I definitely get worn out. Like I'd get back from a trip and want to want to do anything for a couple of days. But I got sick as much. I was trying to think when I lived in Indiana. I don't remember. And I definitely did sometimes, but I don't think I got sick as much from traveling. I think you might be right.

Speaker 1:
[10:08] But then also last week, I played a good bit of Pokémon Champions after it came out. In what we talked about a little bit more in the episode we started to record last week that we had to stop because my toddler started getting sick in the middle of us recording. And that's why we didn't have an episode last week. The Champions, I had a lot of fun. Grinded all the way up to Master Bowl. Haven't really felt that this is kind of what has happened to me in the past when I've played ladder games like that. I mean, I guess really just other Pokémon video game titles, like Sword and Shield, Scarlet and Violet. Whenever I get to Master Bowl, it's like, okay, I made it. I've done this. I'm not really going to push for like the top tier of Champions, right? And it's like, I kind of have made it. So like, I haven't really played it much this past week. But I did have a lot of fun playing Champions. It seemed like right initially there was like a lot of bugs people were having. I didn't really experience too much of that, thankfully. But yeah, I enjoyed it a good bit. And yeah, I definitely hop in and maybe I don't know. I could see myself like hopping in and grinding up to Master Ball a few more times, you know, if like a format seems interesting of like the Pokémon that are there.

Speaker 2:
[11:26] Is that like the equivalent of getting to Arceus and TCG Live?

Speaker 1:
[11:29] Basically, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[11:30] Yeah, I've only I have only seen well now I don't see anything about it. But I mean, it's one of those things where it's like negativity rises to the top on Twitter. And I only saw negative things. It did sound it seemed like the launch was pretty bad. It like reminded me of like the most recent launch I could think of is when like the Halo Master Chief collection launch and the game was basically unplayable. But I remember like back in the day, like the new Call of Duty would drop. And like it would be impossible to get into a game or get on the servers or something like that. That's that's the kind of launch it seemed like it had. And that's just like not something that like happens usually nowadays. Like would you can is champions a AAA game? It is right.

Speaker 1:
[12:02] Like, I mean, it could be a successful media franchise in the world. Right.

Speaker 2:
[12:07] It feels like it's not in terms of just like graphically, obviously.

Speaker 1:
[12:11] But like that's kind of it probably isn't based on the budget. That's really I think that's how they determine it. Right. Is budget of the game like they could. Yeah. In theory, the budget could be endless. Right. But there is a budget for the game. And it's probably not near what like a Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto is.

Speaker 2:
[12:27] Oh, yeah, definitely not Grand Theft Auto. But I don't know how much money they've sank into the next Grand Theft Auto.

Speaker 1:
[12:31] Who knows at this point that that game is going to be like one hundred dollars. I guarantee it. Yeah. I wonder if it's supposed to come out like a month from now or something like that.

Speaker 2:
[12:40] I think I think it was, but it maybe got delayed. I'm not sure. Maybe it's still supposed to come out. That has the potential to be the biggest flop, maybe in like media history, to be honest.

Speaker 1:
[12:48] It's the most I've ever wanted to show.

Speaker 2:
[12:50] I'm not going to play the game. I've never played a Grand Theft Auto. I have no interest in it, but I don't want it to flop. But it has the potential.

Speaker 3:
[12:57] It has the potential to be the biggest flop.

Speaker 1:
[12:59] This says that...

Speaker 2:
[13:03] I don't get delayed at least once or twice. I guess it was like about last year, at the end of last year, maybe.

Speaker 1:
[13:07] GTA is scheduled now to release November 19th, 2026. It was supposed to release, I remember, May 26th.

Speaker 3:
[13:15] It has caught that delay.

Speaker 2:
[13:17] Have you ever played a GTA game before?

Speaker 3:
[13:19] Just a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[13:21] No, it's like, I think I played through like a little bit of the story of GTA 5, but I didn't finish it. There's sometimes what will happen with those game. Basically me with any single player game, if I don't sit down and get into the story and like finish it in a weekend, I'll like play it over the course of a couple days. And then if I don't finish it in those couple days, I like won't go back and touch it. And it's like, I'll try to go back and touch it a couple weeks later when I have time again. And then it's like, I've forgotten where I'm at and like what's happening in the story or like what the control combos are for all the different moves and things you can do. And it's like, just feels too cumbersome to relearn. And so I like lose interest in it. I don't know. Something's really got to grasp me and I've got to just sit down and like lock in and finish it. Which I've done like, you know, when a game comes out that I want to do that with, I usually can walk in and do it. But like a game I've gone back to and tried to play multiple times, is Horizon Zero Dawn, which is supposed to be a great game. I've been really interested in the story of it. The gameplay feels pretty fun, but it's just like, I'll pick it up and then I just can't, if I don't, because I haven't locked in and sat down and finished it, I don't know if I ever will, to be honest.

Speaker 2:
[14:42] Yeah. I do wonder, I mean, the thing is like something like Champions, even the budget-wise, it gets more players than, I mean, the longevity potential of Champions is way higher than so many other video games as well. So it might not be qualified as a AAA game, but player-based, it's like, I think the Resident Evil game that I played recently, the Resident Evil game that came out recently that I played, I'm pretty sure that's considered a AAA game, but the Champions has to have way more players playing Champions than the Resident Evil game for sure. It's just reaches such a wider audience. People are going to be buying that game in still a ton, like a year from now. Oh, yeah, I guess maybe it's not a AAA game, but it feels like it is basically.

Speaker 1:
[15:18] It is a free game. It is a free game.

Speaker 2:
[15:20] Oh, is it Champions free?

Speaker 1:
[15:21] Yeah, it is free.

Speaker 2:
[15:22] Oh, I didn't know it was free. I thought you still had to pay for it.

Speaker 1:
[15:24] Nope, 100% free. Though that is its own argument and discussion though, because one of the best Pokémon in the game is Mega Fluet, which is locked behind, the only way you can get it is by having played Pokémon Legend ZA and transferring it to Champions.

Speaker 2:
[15:40] What's the only? Oh, see, I don't like. Well, so it is. See, that's free. It's weird.

Speaker 1:
[15:46] It's free to download and play. I'm pretty sure you can buy VP and like I didn't get. I spent $0 on the game, but I have all of the old Pokémon games. So like when I wanted to build a team, I was able to just transfer the Pokémon from the old Pokémon games to Champions, right? It's like I already had them.

Speaker 2:
[16:06] That stuff kind of annoys me. Like as long as you can just if you can get it eventually, I don't mind like pay to win in terms of like getting it faster for a degree. But if you can't just get it eventually in like a reasonable amount of time, then that feels kind of there is no way to get the Mega Fluent unless you have the CA.

Speaker 1:
[16:23] And it's also that you can't get the Mega Fluent in Legends until you finish the game. It's like at the end of the game. Spoiler alert, you get the Mega Fluent.

Speaker 3:
[16:36] Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[16:37] So it's like 20 to 30 hours of gameplay.

Speaker 2:
[16:40] Yeah, I just like even if you have to pay for champions, like if you once you have the game, you should be able to play the game to its full extent. That's how I kind of feel. Like I don't like the especially something that's competitive, like champions, like it's supposed to be kind of like supposed to be like basically just a competitive game for the most part. Right. Like an Easter egg from like, you know, a bit of a different Pokémon game for some reason that you get when you play the story mode of a future Pokémon game is one thing. But yeah, those kind of things always irked me a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[17:08] And then one other thing too, that I got actually in the mail today. We may have, I'm sure by now, people have seen the Pokémon Target collab that is coming up releasing May the 2nd, but I actually got hooked up with a little bit of the merchandise order. I'm actually, this hat and the shirt I'm wearing, which is a Charizard shirt, I'm not going to turn around and show it, are all part of it. And they sent me a huge box, which is back there, which is, it's made to look like a Pokémon Center from like Pokémon Red or Blue, which is kind of cool. There's a lot of little cool Easter eggs in it. But they sent me a lot of the shirts and merchandise. Lorelai, Azul's girlfriend, was very jealous of the Gengar. And the crossbody bag, which was a big one and a huge box full of other stuff. So shout outs to Target and the Pokémon Company International for hooking me up with some of that stuff early. I have to give Azul a shot at getting maybe one or two of these things. Maybe he can get his hands on one. Like they sent me two hoodies. Maybe you can have one of the hoodies, I guess.

Speaker 2:
[18:19] Be good.

Speaker 3:
[18:19] I appreciate the offer though, Chip.

Speaker 2:
[18:21] Yeah, I like those kinds of designs. The clean designs looking as well. So they actually they are they are nice designs.

Speaker 1:
[18:30] Yeah, and it does feel like good quality stuff. So yeah, thanks to Target for sending it out this way. One thing I did not get sent any of the kickballs, the playground balls, and I will definitely have to get every single one of those because Samuel will be all about them for sure, lots of sweet stuff.

Speaker 3:
[18:50] So unfortunate for Samuel.

Speaker 1:
[18:54] And I think Azul, that's everything. We can just go ahead and hop into our first topic here, which is going to be an update regarding the things that went down at the Orlando Regional Championships this past weekend. So, I guess a couple of weekends go now at this point, but Pokémon just finally put out a statement. So we did talk about this last week. If you didn't watch last week's episode, basically there were two incidents on stream that involved Makani Tran, the Pokémon TCG player, and then Firestar73, the Pokémon Go player, both receiving game losses for actions at the stream table. And this became a pretty big deal as, I mean, Makani was in a Swiss round. I think honestly, if Makani's situation was the only thing, you know, it would have been a talk about thing for like a few days, but it would have blown over, right? It would have been annoying, whatever, blown over. It really blew up because of the Pokémon Go thing, because the guy who won the tournament was given a game loss after the game had completed or as the game was completing, which led to him losing the title of champion and it going to the other player. So, I don't know, do you want to add before I just hop in and read this thing?

Speaker 2:
[20:17] I was going to say, I mean, it definitely overshadowed Makani's, but I feel like maybe if there was nothing to overshadow Makani's, Makani's would have gone further for sure. I don't know how far it would have gone.

Speaker 3:
[20:25] That's definitely a good point.

Speaker 1:
[20:27] All right, so here is the community tab post. It is under the news and announcements section on the Pokémon community forum. From TPCI Olly Wap, who says, at the recent Pokémon Orlando Regionals, two instances of penalties being issued during streamed matches have created questions within the community about celebrations. Play Pokémon has reviewed each instance and we would like to provide more information. In the first instance, during the Pokémon TCG Swiss Round 13 match, the tournament headphones were removed and thrown onto the table on top of cards and damage counters, putting the TCG game state in disarray before additional game actions could be taken to complete the game. A match loss was issued for the disruption to the game state and not playing out the final sequence to finish the game. Should I just read through everything or do you want to talk about things as we get to the end of them?

Speaker 2:
[21:23] I guess maybe we should break them up and talk about them individually. Yeah, I think breaking them down individually. I think the first thing I would want to say is that this is just like, this is a good thing that they're making this post. I didn't think they were going to say anything, but we do want them to make these posts and be transparent. I've been seeing people say that this isn't transparency, but I just don't know what you want. You can think they're wrong.

Speaker 1:
[21:50] Well, I think that the issue for a lot of people, and I agree with this, is that it feels like... So, you remember a couple of years ago after... I think it was after Makani's initial stream incident, right? Where they tweeted that they would post, give updates about big things that happened in the community. I only remember one time them doing that. And that's it, right? It feels like transparency would be, something happens, they make a statement. Something happens, they make a statement. What has happened, though, is something happens. Massive community backlash, not quite enough, but mainstream backlash leads to them making a statement. And that's where we are right now, basically. This blew up. This was massive, right? This was on everywhere on Twitter. Duxardo, like...

Speaker 2:
[22:49] And the other instance was the Rowan situation, I think, where they made a comment, right? And that was also... That did hit the mainstream pretty hard.

Speaker 1:
[22:57] So, this is not... It's not transparency unless it's, like, a regular, continual thing.

Speaker 2:
[23:04] That's fair. I didn't actually, like, think about it in that way at all. I was just like, I didn't expect them to say anything. And it feels like there has been other situations where we would, like, I think the Gabriel Fernandez situation is, like, a big one that happened recently. It's like, where is the statement on this? But you've made this point, and I've seen other people make this point. It's like, when miners are involved, they haven't made, but... Are Makani and Charis, like, I mean, this is...

Speaker 1:
[23:33] They're teenagers.

Speaker 2:
[23:35] Yeah, that followed, that's the same category, okay? So they're not, they're fine.

Speaker 1:
[23:40] They might be over 18, but I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[23:42] Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure.

Speaker 1:
[23:45] I think Makani is, at least. I don't know about Charis.

Speaker 2:
[23:47] Yeah. So, I mean, if they are, I guess we still have that as a question mark. Do they refuse to make statements? And like, yeah, the Gabriel Fernandez situation was really big in the community, but it didn't break containment really too much, maybe a little bit. Like, was there a Dexerto article or something, maybe? But so I guess that's fair. Honestly, that's a really fair point. So I think for me, it's kind of like now, like with that in mind, I didn't think about that at all, really. It was like, how far do how far do you does it have to break containment for them to make a post? And that is a fair point. The two times they have made a comment. Although this is like in a less official capacity, whereas like the previous post was like an article on pokemon.com.

Speaker 3:
[24:23] Right.

Speaker 2:
[24:23] But this is like in the forums.

Speaker 1:
[24:25] This is where it was for Rowan's thing, too.

Speaker 2:
[24:28] I was the exact same situation.

Speaker 3:
[24:29] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[24:30] And I think this is a fine way in theory for these things to be communicated for sure. And they tweeted, right, as well, like put it out there for people to link directly to it. It's not like it was just made and then not like publicized.

Speaker 2:
[24:45] I guess that'll be the question moving forward that I guess I have. I didn't really think about it in terms like that. I think that is a fair critique for sure. It seems like we have to go really far for them to make a post when it's like there's plenty of other scenarios where they should probably just address the community. And it should be more about how the community responds and less about how Joe Schmo article site responds. Right.

Speaker 1:
[25:02] This should just be like I think this is like them making a statement like this is good. But I want this to be what happens. After every single major public facing incident.

Speaker 2:
[25:19] And even some like ones that aren't even that big, potentially, as well, like there are I think there will be situations where it's like it should be the standard for a smaller situation doesn't have to get huge for them to make a statement on situations like for like on stream penalties, certain bans and stuff like that, like it's better just to have transparency to the situation. Yeah, but like I would say that it is still transparency for the situation, though, which I saw some people saying it's just like not transparency, but like I don't but it's like they will we're going to get into like forced transparency though. Yeah, it's okay. You can argue that. Yeah, and like, but yeah, like I said, it's fair. It's fair to be upset that we have to has to be forced for them to say anything to say it's not transparency. I think would be would be disingenuous. Like they believe what they're putting out here and they're they're saying what they believe. TPCI is saying what they believe basically with this post. And that's what we want. Right. We want to be able to say what they believe.

Speaker 1:
[26:15] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[26:16] So I would say in that in terms of that though is still transparency. But I definitely that sentiment definitely rings true. And I didn't like clock that at all. But definitely something I'm going to definitely something worth adding to the further analysis of like the lack of or future statements that happen.

Speaker 1:
[26:32] Also I just learned how old Mekani is because it's in his Twitter bio. He's 20.

Speaker 2:
[26:38] Okay, so Mekani is 20.

Speaker 1:
[26:41] But he replied, quote, retweeted this, you know, we just read this. A match loss was issued for the disruption to the game state and not playing out the final sequence to finish the game. And he said, this community statement is not accurate. Two separate head judges told me I was giving a match loss for, quote, throwing my headset down and being, quote, dangerous. Not a single judge told me I was giving a game loss for disrupting the board. I didn't even get a chance to appeal the ruling because your judges didn't even tell me what the rule ruling was. How is that okay? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[27:17] I mean, that is bad.

Speaker 1:
[27:18] And this is what he has said the whole time, right? He has said this the whole time that these are the things he was told. So, what has happened here? Some between these two things where this is what Pokémon is saying happened, and this is what Makani is saying he was told in the moment.

Speaker 2:
[27:37] Yeah. And it's definitely like, I mean, it's hard to pick us. Like, I mean, I don't want to say like, I feel like I'm more likely to believe there's a miscommunication or an intentional miscommunication between the judges and TPCI than what Makani is saying. But like, I don't want to put that on the judges or TPCI either. I want to hope that everyone's being honest here. But there definitely is some miscommunication. Let me say not intentional.

Speaker 1:
[28:02] Let me say too, though, I do think that it would have been totally reasonable for Makani to receive a game loss for disrupting the board. I think that would have been totally reasonable. Yeah, if they but that's not what they told him. They said it was dangerous that he threw his headset. We've gone back and watched it. He did not throw his headset. He set it down.

Speaker 2:
[28:20] He set it down maybe more aggressively than he could.

Speaker 1:
[28:22] Maybe marginally aggressively. It was not even aggressively. That is like...

Speaker 2:
[28:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[28:26] It was totally like not... The way he put his headset down, not a big deal at all. It maybe was a little amplified because a couple of dice moved, but it was a big pop-off moment and he jumped up, right? I think it would be totally reasonable for him to have received his game loss for what Pokémon is saying here, but that's just not what he was told in the moment.

Speaker 2:
[28:46] Yeah, yeah, and that's like definitely a really big issue. And I don't know if this... I don't think it's going to lead to anything further. I don't know. Maybe TPCI will look at Makani's comment and then they'll re-talk to the judges. I'm sure they interviewed judges to some extent as well throughout this whole process. They definitely seem to be like they want to be very thorough with their investigations, which is one thing I was going to come to their defense with how long it took them. But one of the reasons it maybe took so long was, like you said, it had to break containment to a certain degree for them to even care about it, which, yeah, so I don't even know if I want to throw that out as a defense for TPCI at this point, to be honest. And then one more thing I was going to say to that. Yeah, I mean, I would disagree that that should, if that's why, yeah, if they wanted to be like, he disrupted the board and we gave him a game loss for that, I would disagree that that should be a game loss if he hadn't had like a previous warning. But if they think that's what it should be, that's fine. And then we could argue about whether that's correct or not. But there is like definitely a problem here where there is like two stories. And that's like definitely the big issue. And I mean, the miscommunication comes down to the judges. Like they either didn't tell Makani the right thing, or they told TPCI something different. That definitely was like an information path from judges that were on scene to TPCI for them to make this statement. I'm almost like, I feel like that has to have happened. So there's a miscommunication there, assuming we're assuming Makani is being honest here. And I have no reason to believe he hasn't been, like you said, he's been consistent with his stories up to this point. Oh, yeah, I don't know. I would have to take TPCI going back and reinterviewing the judges who like they had previously gotten statements from to get to the bottom of this. And, I mean, I don't know. There's nothing to come out of this as well. I saw some people responding to Makani's comments, like just like let it go or just move on. Like Makani doesn't want anything. He just wants to be on the record that what they are stating here is wrong. He's like not looking for like a game reversal or anything. There's nothing to reverse as far as he's not looking for anything except being like, nope, what they just said here was wrong. That's not what happened or that's not what I was told.

Speaker 1:
[30:53] He still finished second place in the tournament. So it all ended up. That's another reason where I feel like this would not have ended up not being a huge deal if the Pokémon Go thing had not happened because he still made top cut. He still ended up getting into the final. He ended up beating Karas in top four, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[31:15] Went about as well as it could have gone still.

Speaker 1:
[31:16] Yeah. And then the bigger deal for sure is the Pokémon Go situation. And the post here says, In the second instance during the Pokémon Go Grand Finals, we would like to share some information which may not be known to the broader community. Prior to the final game incident, during game one of the Bracket Reset series, a player was issued a warning for the action of hitting and shaking the table during gameplay.

Speaker 2:
[31:41] Why do they say a player?

Speaker 1:
[31:43] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[31:44] They mean like what?

Speaker 1:
[31:45] They don't even name anyone in any of this. And this is what they did with the Rowan situation too. They did not name anyone.

Speaker 3:
[31:51] Yeah. Yes. Why?

Speaker 2:
[31:55] I guess we know who they're talking about.

Speaker 1:
[31:57] It's one of those things. We talked about this one. The Rowan thing happened. It's like if you know you know, they don't want to drag people's names.

Speaker 2:
[32:03] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's right.

Speaker 1:
[32:05] Maybe, right? They don't. So.

Speaker 2:
[32:07] No, we know. And they know we know.

Speaker 1:
[32:09] Yeah. A player was issued a warning for the action of hitting and shaking the table during gameplay. Actions such as these can have a negative impact on the experience of participants and disturb the match in progress. Then during game five, this same player's behavior continued to be disruptive, including shaking the table to the point that there was a disruption to the broadcast experience. These repeated infractions resulted in a penalty that was escalated to game loss.

Speaker 2:
[32:36] Which game five? Was it game five of the prior to the bracket reset or at the bracket, after the bracket reset? It has to be after the bracket reset, right?

Speaker 1:
[32:46] I think, I mean, it must be. I did see, I'm going to find it here. So there was this one post showing him hitting the table. In game one, this is the game one hitting the table. You can see a little bit of, I mean.

Speaker 2:
[33:02] Well, there's some shake, yeah. I think. That's in the game, I think. The opponent doesn't even notice.

Speaker 1:
[33:11] Yeah, exactly. Like totally, like totally no impact there. I feel like there was another, I saw another post. I should have bookmarked it. I usually try to bookmark these things. Let's see if I can find it here in a moment. That showed his, when the disconnect happened. And there was a moment where his screen went completely black on his phone.

Speaker 3:
[33:37] In game five?

Speaker 1:
[33:37] Yeah. Well, at some point, I don't know if it was in game five. I'll see if I can find it here.

Speaker 3:
[33:41] Hang on.

Speaker 1:
[33:43] But yeah, I don't know. You go ahead and hop in and give your thoughts.

Speaker 2:
[33:48] Let me these repeated infractions resulted. So was the was it in game? Was it?

Speaker 1:
[33:54] Let's see.

Speaker 2:
[33:55] One thing that's like not clarified in this is. And I'm wondering is like, was him popping off the disruption, the second disruption? And now I do agree that if you do something inappropriate. You get a warning and maybe even get another warning. It should lead to a bigger penalty. We actually saw that happen. We didn't talk about this penalty, but Kara Scott had a double price penalty in top four against Makani, where she was, I don't think she was cheating or anything like that, but she was looking down at her deck while she was shuffling. And she had been warned previously to not do that. She did it. I don't know how many warnings she got, but she did it. I think it was multiple warnings, what it sounded like, but eventually it escalated to a double price penalty.

Speaker 1:
[34:37] All I know of was she had a previous warning.

Speaker 2:
[34:40] Okay, so it might have just been one warning, but yeah, you're warned to not doing something. You do the thing again, higher penalty happens. That's fine, that's reasonable. Even in this situation, I think that is still erratically reasonable, but I don't even know you found the other instance.

Speaker 1:
[34:53] I did find it, yeah. So here's the two instances here. There's the hit of the table. And then here is, this is in Grand Finals Reset.

Speaker 2:
[35:07] But he almost unplugged his phone there or something. Is that why it...

Speaker 1:
[35:12] I guess, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[35:13] He doesn't hit the table, he just like lifts his phone up on his... In his right hand, he like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are the phones just like plugged in? Are you allowed to hold your phone? I don't even know.

Speaker 1:
[35:23] Yes, you are allowed to hold the phone.

Speaker 2:
[35:25] You don't have to set it on the... Well, yeah, you wouldn't have to do that at the normal tables, right?

Speaker 1:
[35:28] Yeah, you are allowed to hold it. But I think it also can just be mounted.

Speaker 2:
[35:37] I mean, it just doesn't seem like that much is happening. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[35:43] Yeah, I'm having a hard time with this.

Speaker 2:
[35:45] The first one I could see that we just can't see the actual... But his opponent doesn't even react. Are the judges just the ones that like the dice, like the judges were afraid of the dice from Makani's headset, and they're also afraid of the table shaking, like from Fire Stars? Are the judges that are uncomfortable about these things? Or is it like the opponent doesn't even care? Yeah. I don't know. It's hard to like see that this is like a...

Speaker 1:
[36:11] And that's one of the things they cite, right? Actions such as these can have a negative impact on the experience of participants and disturb the match in progress.

Speaker 2:
[36:21] The screen did go black there for a second, but I don't think it affected the game, right?

Speaker 1:
[36:25] Yes, the broadcast gets a little messed up, right? For just a couple seconds, but I think the most important thing is just that the game is right.

Speaker 2:
[36:34] And once again, his opponent, it definitely didn't affect his opponent either. His opponent is like locked in, like, was it Nighttime Crasher? Like Nighttime Crasher is locked, or Clasher. Nothing is disrupting Nighttime Clasher over here. Like, he is full locked in. No matter table punching or disconnected phones, like, no reaction, just full locked.

Speaker 1:
[36:55] And Firestar did give a statement here on X. He said, the incident you are now for the first time claiming was the basis of the decision did not affect the gameplay at all, yet decided the whole tournament. Section 2.1 requires a clear explanation of any infraction and its penalty. And I was never given this as the basis at all.

Speaker 2:
[37:15] Yeah, I mean, so we're getting, I mean, from Akani and Firestar here, both of them are saying, and both of them have been consistent, like you mentioned, with their statements, that they were never given these warnings or penalties in the moment from the judges. So if TPCI got different information, it has to have come from the judges. Like, that's the only place where the information could have changed or been altered. Unless they did further follow ups with Firestar and Akani, but you would think that they would be doing differently.

Speaker 1:
[37:43] Yeah, I feel like they would have said, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[37:47] Like, I don't know. I don't know the judges that were involved. I don't want to say that the judges are, like, protecting themselves in this situation by, like, making stuff up to make them seem seem themselves, like, seem better for the situation than what they were in the moment to TPCI. Like that would that would be pretty bad, like if they did. If they lied to TPCI to make themselves look better in this situation, that'd be pretty bad. So I don't want to say the judges are doing that, but that's where the communication disconnect is, is between the judges and TPCI. Does both Firestar and McConnie have been saying the same things for the whole time? TPCI said something different happened, McConnie and Firestar replied with, no, we were never given these warnings or penalties or statements. These statements were never made to us. This makes no sense. So that's where the disconnect is. And I don't know, I think TPCI maybe needs to go back and question the judges. I don't even know where you go from here.

Speaker 1:
[38:34] Well, I wonder if, like, I feel like part of this investigation should have involved talking to McConnie and Firestar and Kairis and Nighttime Clasher, like all parties involved, right? Like a true investigation involves hearing all sides of the story and what happened and everyone's unique experiences. It does not sound like that went down, right? There was no... I mean, Firestar and McConnie have not said... I mean, we don't know for sure, but I feel like either of them would have said whatever Pok... Especially Firestar, like if Pokémon had reached out to him, we probably would have heard about it, right?

Speaker 2:
[39:08] Definitely, and yeah, it definitely does not seem like that happened. And that could have just caused TPCI to question further if they had just like...

Speaker 1:
[39:13] I think one thing that we need to definitely just like make clear here is like, TPCI is not the one making these decisions, right? It is the judges at the tournament, and... but what TPCI has done here, and they say here is that we will uphold the decisions made by judges at this event. You know, standing by what they've been told by their judges, which, I mean, I think in theory is like the good practical thing to do, right? You want to trust the people that you have in place for sure. And, you know, TPCI is not going to, you know, change their mind based on like community outcry. They're going to hold true to like the rulings that were made by their trained judges at the event, which, for better or for worse, probably is the correct thing to do, right?

Speaker 2:
[40:10] I would like to see that they would be flexible and take it, you know, add the nuance of situation to situation. And if they think something wrong happened...

Speaker 1:
[40:16] I feel like last week when we talked about this, though, because I did last week say I would like to see Firestar be named the champion. I've, you know, maybe thought about it a little bit.

Speaker 3:
[40:26] No, I don't think they should change...

Speaker 2:
[40:27] No, but I think changing the result of the tournament... I think if they thought they were wrong here, they should say...

Speaker 1:
[40:32] Well, they wouldn't change the result of the tournament, in theory, right? Because, like, he did win the game.

Speaker 2:
[40:39] No, but they've already said Nighttime Clash is the winner. Like, I don't think you can go back and do that when you get the... When you get, like, competitors and stuff involved, you get other parties involved. But I think it would be fine for them to be like here, to say here, like, a mistake was made, we always strive for greatness, we're gonna move forward to make sure our judges are as prepared as possible for future tournaments like that, and I think the judges need to be banned. I think it's fine for TPCI to... I think it's good that they said this rather than nothing. It's good they said... It's better they said something than nothing. It's good they said, you know, we believe the judges made the correct decision and we uphold the decisions, or it would have been good if they had said, we think there was an error made, and, you know, we could only move forward from here and hope for better at future tournaments. But they shouldn't even say one of those two things. But we just hope that they're being honest, right? We hope that they truly believe that what was done was correct, and that's why they stand by it, and they would do it again if they could. And we hope if they had thought it was wrong, they would say that as well. So we have to hope that there's some level of honesty here coming from TPCI. That's what I think, anyways. They truly believe that this is correct, and that's why they're saying that they uphold the decisions. I think it's correct for the judges to make the call for what they did in the situation. And even though they think it might have been tough, they think they did the right thing. But we disagree with it. I disagree with it. You disagree with it, I think, right? I think those judgments shouldn't have happened. There shouldn't have been a game loss in either of the situations.

Speaker 3:
[42:06] For the reasons I can tell how many...

Speaker 2:
[42:07] Well, as far as I can tell, it's how many warnings the players had built up. It seems like there wasn't enough cause for those things to be game losses. So I disagree with it. And I think part of the statement should have been them being like, mistakes are made and we can't go back and change the past, we're gonna look forward to the future and we're gonna do better. Like that's what the statement I think should have been here, but this is what they believe, that I'm glad they're saying what they believe.

Speaker 1:
[42:28] I think it would be a very... There's so much on the line at these tournaments, right, with placements and money and stuff like that. Like I think admitting something...

Speaker 2:
[42:39] You think it's all PR?

Speaker 1:
[42:41] I mean, I think that's a disaster.

Speaker 2:
[42:44] Oh yeah, but do you think this statement is all PR? Like they're not being genuine here.

Speaker 1:
[42:49] That's not for me to say.

Speaker 2:
[42:51] That's what I'm saying, I'm saying I hope at least they're being honest, even if I think I disagree with it, but I hope they're being honest. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:
[42:59] Pokémon judges are committed to bringing the best possible experience to our players by preserving the competitive integrity of our events. Without them and their commitment to play Pokémon, we would not be able to hold events, and it is our expectation that they are treated with the same respect as all people in the community.

Speaker 2:
[43:15] I think that's good for them to say, because I think the call out for the judges from the community and people outside of the community was out of line. There was a lot of people calling for judges to be banned. Like I said, I think it's a top-down thing. I think if a judge mess up on stage or something, don't ban them, they can come back, they can do better. But maybe it's something in the training of the judges that needs to be worked on or something like that. It's good to see them defend the judges in that regard, I think, I think people are being pretty nasty towards judges as a whole after the incident.

Speaker 1:
[43:47] In the moment of a win, emotions are high and we recognize that these emotions can lead to energetic reactions celebrating a win. We want to support this authentic positive reaction and not discourage this excitement. Celebrations are not an issue, but actions that disrupt or can negatively impact competitive integrity can be. I think this is a true statement. Actions that disrupt and negatively impact competitive integrity are an issue. I don't think we saw that.

Speaker 2:
[44:21] I don't think we saw that. Now, I would recommend people to be careful of doing too much when you win a game. You got to hit them with the Akira. You got to do the Akira, the ethical pop off from now on. I would recommend that people be careful when you're getting towards the end of winning a match or a game. Because they say that, but they also stand by what they did. So basically, they're setting the precedent moving forward that if you do something similar to Makani or... In Makani's situation, like I said, I think he did go too far. And I think if he had done it again, it should be probably a game loss, match loss, whatever. But I think it should have been like a warning. Move on. The Firestar situation is like completely just like bizarre to me that that would ever lead to a match loss or a game loss or whatever. That eventually led to the match loss, whatever. But they're standing by it. So that means we know... Look at the trending. I know.

Speaker 1:
[45:12] It's got community. NHL Playoffs, justice for Firestar.

Speaker 2:
[45:16] We know where they stand on it. So I would recommend people don't pop off. Don't take any breath before you after you win your match and then decide where to go from there. Because we know what they are. We know the standard they've set.

Speaker 1:
[45:28] This did get community noted on X, which says the go player, Firestar73, was not warned for shaking or hitting the table, nor is there any footage of the broadcast experience being disrupted. I would say that's not true because it did... There is the blackout, right? That did happen.

Speaker 2:
[45:44] Wait, did Firestar say he didn't even get the first warning in game one?

Speaker 1:
[45:48] I didn't see that in this post, but that's what they're saying. The incident you are now for the first time claiming that the basis of the decision did not affect the gameplay at all and you decided the whole tournament and he said, I was never given this as the basis at all.

Speaker 2:
[46:01] Or yeah, why the DQ for why the game, the game laws that happened.

Speaker 1:
[46:04] But I'm curious then if the TCG player, Makani Tran also says he received a game loss for a dangerous headset through and was not able to appeal.

Speaker 2:
[46:18] I mean, Twitter is pretty bad these days, but I'm not gonna lie, the community notes are like one of the few shining lights of Twitter because they're usually provide good clarity to context. Yeah. Yeah. To poor information. I'm actually curious about that. If now that we're going through this whole, I don't think I've ever seen a Firestar has said if he did or did not receive a warning for what they say, I feel like he would have brought that up though if he hadn't. So I assume he did receive the warning in game one. But then that's the thing that I'm like, I don't understand is like, I mean, so what they say about game number five, he received the same penalty in game five, but because he had a warning, it escalated to a game loss?

Speaker 1:
[47:03] Um, did it have to happen at the final game incident during game one of the Bracket Reset series, a player was issued a warning, the action of hitting and shaking the table during game play. Then during game five, the same player's behavior continued to be disruptive, including shaking the table to the point that there was disruption to the broadcast experience. I don't see where he shakes the table because it's repeated infractions resulted in a penalty that was escalated to game loss.

Speaker 2:
[47:30] He did somehow disconnect his phone, but he was holding it in his other hand, so I don't even know how that works. But I guess they can't pause the game, right? They don't pause games.

Speaker 1:
[47:39] No, no.

Speaker 2:
[47:40] Yeah, OK. I was going to say, why don't they pause the game to give him the penalty right then? But you don't do that. So you have to wait till the game completes to give him the penalty.

Speaker 1:
[47:46] It's all timing in Pokémon GO.

Speaker 2:
[47:47] Like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[47:49] You can't do that.

Speaker 3:
[47:50] Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[47:52] Yeah, I guess like if he was being that disruptive with the table, then I guess I could see it. But like you can't, from the clips, you can't tell at all how disruptive he is. Even the first clip seems pretty, pretty tame overall, I feel like.

Speaker 1:
[48:07] Yeah, definitely does not seem.

Speaker 2:
[48:10] And I feel like it's another one of those things where I feel like we can add some nuance to it. And like, depending on that you're in the finals, like, can't we be a little bit more lenient? I feel like it's fine to be a little bit, like, the energy is higher, emotions are higher, pressure is higher.

Speaker 1:
[48:24] Like, I would, if the table hit is enough to genuinely be disruptive, and even if Nighttime Clasher is locked in, where you could say, like, OK, there's a reasonable chance that this could have disrupted the opponent's actions, the table was hit so hard, then I could see a penalty being sufficient, yes? But it just doesn't look like that. Like, it does not look like the table was hit nearly hard enough for that to be a consideration.

Speaker 2:
[48:50] Yeah, definitely. It kind of makes me, like, think about stuff like in the TCG where it's, like, you can let your opponent take something back in the TCG, even on stream. Like, you can be like, no, you can take that back, it's fine. Like, there are situations where the judge will be like, if your opponent is OK with it, you can take this back.

Speaker 1:
[49:04] I don't know that they say that much anymore, do they?

Speaker 2:
[49:07] Well, no, yeah, I'm pretty sure. It's like, yeah, for, like, I'm trying to think of, like, situations.

Speaker 1:
[49:10] I always hate that, wouldn't that? I don't think that...

Speaker 2:
[49:14] I don't know if they do that.

Speaker 1:
[49:14] It should not be put on, because that makes you seem like a bad guy for saying no.

Speaker 2:
[49:18] Well, not, let's say they don't even, like, voice it, but you could be like, yeah, you can take that back. That's fine if the opponent asks the opponent, right? So, I mean, if you can do things like that in the TCG, I don't know if you if you hit the table a little bit hard and your opponent doesn't care, like, I don't know. Like, I just don't know. I feel like that's that's in the same realm of like.

Speaker 1:
[49:38] Like, theoretically, you shouldn't be able to do this, but if the opponent's OK with it, like, if the opponent draws an extra card off Iano or Judge or something, it doesn't matter if you're like, I don't care, just put it back. If a Judge sees it, there has to be a penalty. You know, it's like.

Speaker 2:
[49:52] I don't know where all the penalties sit for that right now, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[49:55] You cannot you cannot like if. Like, I know you were one who always said, like, if my opponent draws an extra card off Iano, I'm not going. I'm going to tell them to put it back and I'm not going to call Judge. Right.

Speaker 2:
[50:07] Yeah. But. But if Judge sees you, it's your coach.

Speaker 1:
[50:09] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[50:11] Yeah. I don't know where everything sits with that to be honest right now. See, I don't play the game anymore at our old tournaments. I'm retired. Yeah. I mean, I guess he could have punched the table hard enough, or maybe it was it was necessary.

Speaker 1:
[50:21] We've only seen a couple of clips like we have not scrubbed the entire live stream. Right. But like people have scrubbed the live stream. And I feel like there would be clips like the clips circulating are likely the only instances of. I don't know, maybe it would be worth scrubbing back there again.

Speaker 2:
[50:36] But I mean, the haters go harder than the fans. So if there if there was something out there to go against the narrative, then they probably would have already been found, to be honest. So for sure. Yeah. And it just seems just seems kind of I was going to say one more final thing. But yeah, it just seems super silly for Firestar overall. And the biggest problem here is, though, is that the players are saying. The biggest problem with it all overall is like, even if the players did those things, what was said in the statement is not what the players were told in the moment.

Speaker 1:
[51:06] Yeah, that's the biggest thing here.

Speaker 2:
[51:07] And there's a communication disconnect from what TPCI was told and the statement they made. So that's the biggest problem.

Speaker 1:
[51:17] Well, we did get a couple of new cards revealed since our last episode. That's bound to happen whenever we go two weeks effectively without an episode. The biggest one is definitely Mega Darkrai EX. It's always so funny to me because it's like you look at this and it just looks like a Darkrai if you don't know like what Mega Darkrai looks like. Do you remember? I showed you what it looks like, right?

Speaker 2:
[51:43] Yeah, I thought it looked kind of cool.

Speaker 1:
[51:44] A big eyeball.

Speaker 2:
[51:46] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:46] Effectively.

Speaker 2:
[51:48] I thought it looked kind of cool for the Megas. Megas are pretty hit or miss, I feel like most of the time.

Speaker 1:
[51:58] There we go. I couldn't find there.

Speaker 3:
[51:59] Are you finding an image of it? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[52:03] Maybe it's a little blobular, but it's like you can't.

Speaker 1:
[52:06] This just looks like a normal Darkrai card, right? There's always because I feel like it happens all the time where it's like a TCG player, like they play the cards, right? And then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, that's what that thing looks like whenever they see it, like in the video game.

Speaker 2:
[52:18] Yeah, that's been me with a lot of a lot of card like for like Mega Manectric doesn't look anything different at all, but I've only played with like the wait, is Mega Manectric any different?

Speaker 3:
[52:28] What do you mean? From Manectric? Yes. Much different.

Speaker 2:
[52:34] I can't even picture it in my head.

Speaker 1:
[52:37] Well, here's Mega Manectric.

Speaker 3:
[52:40] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[52:41] Oh, and in the background of this card, you see regular Manectric.

Speaker 2:
[52:45] Oh, yeah, that is quite a bit different. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3:
[52:46] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[52:47] Yeah, like we're playing with the old Mega Cards. I like I couldn't tell you the difference. I also don't really look that hard at card artworks that often, to be honest. Like I just kind of like play the cards and know the text.

Speaker 1:
[52:57] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[52:59] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[52:59] And that's most trading card game players. But anyway, here is Mega Darkrai. Darkrai, of course, a fan favorite in the TCG specifically. There's been multiple very strong Darkrais over the years, namely Darkrai EX two times over Darkrai EX from Dark Explorers and Darkrai EX from Breakpoint. We're both very, very good in their times. This is Mega Darkrai EX with Night Raid for two dark. I guess first off, it is a basic darkness type Pokémon with 280 HP. It is weak to grass with two retreat. Night Raid for two dark, 110 plus. If any of your bench Pokémon have any damage counters on them, this attack does 110 more damage. Pretty decent efficient attack. And then Abyss Eye for three darkness energy. If your opponent's active Pokémon is affected by any special condition, it is now knocked out. And probably main way to progress would be the Dark Bell, a new item card. Both active Pokémon, except for any darkness Pokémon, are now confused.

Speaker 2:
[54:01] Yeah. So I mean, it's okay. I mean, I feel it's a little underwhelming, but I think it's like maybe as a one of an Atoxia City box.

Speaker 1:
[54:09] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[54:09] Like 220 is kind of cool, but we really want to be setting up a three price Pokémon to KO if it has Indipity. Probably not. Obviously, like specific to like the format and metagame that are going on right now, being weak to grass is not great, but you know, who knows where we'll be with this card when it releases or even like, you know, a year or two from now it'll still be standard legal. So, and then, but it is a big cost. The special condition part is like definitely pretty costly.

Speaker 1:
[54:34] I could see, the thing I could see this being good in would be some sort of Zork deck where you could set it up in one turn, attach, ends PP up, energy switch, Janine. That's a lot of cards, right? But you draw a lot of cards with that deck, you play your Dark Bell and it's like, because Zork is damage capped, even though you can do a lot of damage. You are damage capped. This is like your nuke that can just like get through whatever your opponent's active is. Like, you remember Turbo Dark would play like, there was like a time where Turbo Dark would play like a Hypno Toxic Laser in Darkrai GX, like to just like clear something, right?

Speaker 2:
[55:09] Or like Yvitalyx in Eternatus VMAX most recently. I remember people tried that with the Zigzagoon in the Scoop Web Nets.

Speaker 1:
[55:15] Yep. Yep. That was a little better because it was just a Darkness Energy. I played that card actually in Obstacle, in Glare and Obstacle. It was pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[55:23] Good options.

Speaker 1:
[55:24] But yeah, so that's like where I kind of could see this card fitting in, is like A1 of as like an option to clear, like in a meta specific thing, right?

Speaker 2:
[55:34] Yeah. And it could also just be a way to get through a certain kind of wall as well. Like you maybe you only play to get through like Cornerstone or something.

Speaker 1:
[55:41] Yep. This KO is a Crustle, right? That doesn't have a Mist Energy on it.

Speaker 2:
[55:48] Oh, yeah. It definitely seems like it's not like the next. It's not like a Dark Ride deck style card. It's like if my deck plays Dark Energy and this thing could be set up conveniently enough, I might include it in my Dark Deck kind of card.

Speaker 1:
[56:01] And then there is Shadow Dark Energy, which is not a bad one. As long as this card is attached to a Pokémon, it provides one Darkness Energy, prevent all damage done by your opponent's attacks to the bench Darkness Pokémon this card is attached to. It is an OK card. It does not seem amazing.

Speaker 3:
[56:19] Another OK special energy.

Speaker 2:
[56:21] For the card, I like the most of the real revealed ones. Actually, it's the Chi-Yu. I'm a Chi-Yu fan.

Speaker 1:
[56:27] I have Chi-Yu here, Spiraling Envy 20 plus. If this Pokémon has two or more damage counters on it, this attack does 90 more damage. Don't apply weakness for this attack's damage.

Speaker 2:
[56:38] I mean, 110 for a single Dark. Toxtricity gets the damage on it. Like, I don't think that's bad, actually. Let's play like a more efficient one-prize game in like some matchups for a Tox Box style deck.

Speaker 1:
[56:49] Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. It seems like a decent op. I mean, thinking to like the Golden Goes with their Strike It Rich Golden Go...

Speaker 3:
[56:56] Was that attack?

Speaker 1:
[56:57] Is that what it was called?

Speaker 3:
[56:58] Strike It Rich?

Speaker 1:
[56:58] I don't remember the...

Speaker 2:
[57:00] Yeah, it was Strike It Rich.

Speaker 1:
[57:01] The single prize Golden Go could give you that sort of option before you pop off with whatever your big two-prize attacker is.

Speaker 3:
[57:11] Yeah, that you use, too.

Speaker 1:
[57:13] Um, and then there was also Omega... I guess we could just read it really quick since we're here talking about new cards. There was a couple other cards from these gym promos that were revealed, Omega Delphox, and then also this Grisham supporter card. Grisham, heal 50 damage from all Pokémon in play, both yours and your opponent's. That is a lot of potential healing.

Speaker 2:
[57:31] It's like a little bit better than... We have Fennel in the current format, that heals 40 from your side. Right. I think it is just better because like that's... Like when you play Fennel, like I actually have it in my Festival League deck right now, like you play it against Froslass decks. But being able to heal their Monkey Dory's in the same turn would be pretty good. So it is basically just a better Fennel for countering Froslass Monkey Dory decks.

Speaker 1:
[57:54] And then the Omega Delphox EX, 350 HP, Stage 2 Fire-type Pokémon, 2 Retreats. And then it is weak to water. Trick Portal for the attack for 1 Fire Energy. Look at the top 9 cards of your deck and put as many Pokémon you find there onto your bench. Then shuffle the other cards back into your deck. It does say Pokémon, not basic Pokémon, so you can put anything down for just 1 Energy. And then Eerie Gullo for a Fire 2 Colorless. 200 damage, your opponent's active is now burned and confused.

Speaker 2:
[58:30] Yeah, I don't know about this. I guess I could see it maybe being played in like a Delphox deck as a one-up. Like you play like Delphox Emboar.

Speaker 1:
[58:37] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[58:37] Put this in there. So like when you get when you like drawn to like Ultra Ball Candy Turn 2, you can do this and that sets up the rest of your squad.

Speaker 1:
[58:43] The attack, the second attack is like honestly OK.

Speaker 2:
[58:46] Yeah, but it's just like when you compare this to the baby Delphox, it's just like a worse Delphox to be setting up probably.

Speaker 1:
[58:52] Gives you gives up three prizes, which is not great.

Speaker 2:
[58:55] Yeah, I'm actually been kind of disappointed. I haven't seen anything out of Delphox from Japan so far. So that's kind of disappointing because I was like super hyped for that card.

Speaker 1:
[59:04] Well, there's a couple of new ones. We will probably start to see more cards from this Abyss Eye set very soon. And we'll definitely be passing along those translations and information as they are revealed.

Speaker 2:
[59:23] I guess it's going to start.

Speaker 1:
[59:24] The new set comes out in a month in Japan. So we'll see more and more. When's the next Champions League?

Speaker 3:
[59:31] Oh, just two weeks, two weeks, two weeks.

Speaker 2:
[59:35] Yeah, so we're going to see a big reveal there, probably. Although, I mean, they already revealed the Darkrai, which is like the big card from the set, because it's Abyss Eye, Pitch Black, but that's...

Speaker 1:
[59:42] Oh, Champions League Aichi is also the one where there should be the expanded tournament as well.

Speaker 3:
[59:48] So that'll be interesting to see.

Speaker 1:
[59:49] Is Regidrago still just the BDIF?

Speaker 2:
[59:53] No clue. It probably is. I mean, it hasn't been that much changed. It's just so insane, the expanded sucks. And whenever I see people have mentioned it but talk about it on Twitter, I'm like, what's like you just want to go into it? Like there's no way. And I think it could only be worse. Like the thing is, it is an underplayed format, but there's no way it's better than it is. Like it can only be worse than what it is.

Speaker 3:
[60:14] Yeah, if more people were trying to break it.

Speaker 2:
[60:17] Yeah, it can only get further into like degeneracy. Yeah, degeneracy. There's no like saving the format. If I just play with this format long enough, we can save it.

Speaker 3:
[60:28] There's no saving this format for sure.

Speaker 1:
[60:30] Spiral further into madness. All right, Azul. Well, it is time for everyone's favorite segment. Guess that flavor text where each week you or I will pick a card, read the flavor text from that card and have the other host try to guess which Pokémon is featured on that card. Would you keep score? You are of course in the lead. I was unable a couple of weeks ago to score any points on your brutal pick of Makuhita. You are leading 45 to 40. Your chance to continue to grow that lead is here. And there's only a few, I don't know, a couple of months, right? Before the end of the season, and we're going to do a reset in the start of next year. So I don't have to talk about the world.

Speaker 2:
[61:16] That is. Yeah, that is the plan. We're going to the season is going to end. I guess like the week of worlds, and then new season, new Guess That Flavor Tech season, week after worlds, make it a yearly reset thing. Add some, it's like a little bit more stakes.

Speaker 1:
[61:31] Took us four years to amass 40 points.

Speaker 2:
[61:36] I think we're getting, I don't know if we're getting better, actually. I don't know if that's true, actually. Theoretically, we're getting better.

Speaker 1:
[61:44] And there are, of course, three lifelines. If you get the card correct without using any lifelines, you get four points and then you lose a point for each of the lifelines. You use, the lifelines are what set the card is from, what stage the card is, and read the attack name. It's my turn this week. Azul, are you ready? I've got one picked out for you.

Speaker 2:
[62:02] I'm ready, Chip.

Speaker 1:
[62:04] With its acute hearing, it can pick up sounds from far away. It usually hides in quiet places.

Speaker 3:
[62:13] I mean, one more time.

Speaker 1:
[62:17] With its acute hearing, it can pick up sounds from far away. It usually hides in quiet places.

Speaker 2:
[62:26] I feel like it could be, what is the basic of the Shocklock dog?

Speaker 1:
[62:32] Is it a pup?

Speaker 3:
[62:33] Is it a pup?

Speaker 1:
[62:34] It is a little pup.

Speaker 3:
[62:35] It could definitely be a dog.

Speaker 2:
[62:38] A Pokémon, acute hearing. Dogs can hear very well. I feel like it could definitely be a basic Pokémon. Let's go with what's at the cart is from.

Speaker 1:
[62:52] It is from Call of Legends.

Speaker 2:
[62:59] That does nothing for me. Well, it's older than a lot of the newer Pokémon. That's what is it? What? What? What like your is that?

Speaker 1:
[63:07] It's it's Heartgold, SoulSilver, Call of Legends.

Speaker 3:
[63:12] I don't think little black and white.

Speaker 2:
[63:13] I don't think Little Pup was a Pokémon. Little Pup come out black and white. I think it did. I know that that's where the good little pup is from, I think, is black and white.

Speaker 3:
[63:20] Yeah, one of the ones. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[63:21] So this will be a dog, obviously. Agree to me one more time.

Speaker 1:
[63:27] With its acute hearing, it can pick up sounds from far away. It usually hides in quiet places.

Speaker 2:
[63:35] Ramble's basic is snubble. It could be snubble if I'm still just on this dog trend. But let's just, I guess I'm going to use more lifelines here. What? Give me an attack name.

Speaker 1:
[63:44] Fairy power.

Speaker 2:
[63:49] What? Is there was a fairy? Fairy type wasn't even a thing.

Speaker 3:
[63:58] Correct.

Speaker 1:
[63:59] But a lot of Pokémon were given the fairy type.

Speaker 2:
[64:02] They still have the fairy type. Now I should be thinking of Pokémon that became fairy type that weren't... That's just too hard for me to like...

Speaker 3:
[64:13] Cute.

Speaker 2:
[64:14] What is Florges' basic? It's a...

Speaker 3:
[64:17] Floette?

Speaker 2:
[64:18] No. That's a middle one.

Speaker 3:
[64:20] Floette is the little one. Maybe a Pokémon back then? It could have been.

Speaker 2:
[64:26] Alright, what stage is the card? Well, hang on. Fairy... Yeah, give me what stage.

Speaker 3:
[64:29] It could be a stage one.

Speaker 2:
[64:31] Probably a basic.

Speaker 3:
[64:32] It is a stage one.

Speaker 2:
[64:35] Okay. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[64:38] Floette, a Pokémon?

Speaker 2:
[64:40] I don't think Floette was a Pokémon back then. So stage one, Fairy Power. It's probably a psychic Pokémon. No, Gothitelle came out black and white as well, right? It was got wait, was Gothitelle a Pokémon and then it got a stage two? No, I think got the whole Gothitelle line came out black and white. Give me the lifeline one more time.

Speaker 1:
[65:09] With its acute hearing, it can pick up sounds from far away. It usually hides in quiet places.

Speaker 2:
[65:17] Stage one, correct. As a cute hearing, it can hear sounds from far away. It's attack is fairy power.

Speaker 1:
[65:28] You got it.

Speaker 2:
[65:29] Dude, what is this Pokémon? I have nothing. The attack name just gave me absolutely nothing. So I can't even like. Let me think, let me think. Granbull was a Pokémon back then. It did become a fairy type. I don't think it would be Granbull.

Speaker 3:
[65:49] Maybe?

Speaker 2:
[65:53] I don't know. Granbull.

Speaker 3:
[65:54] Give me Granbull.

Speaker 1:
[65:55] Lock it in. He is locking in the Granbull.

Speaker 3:
[65:59] Azul, it is not Granbull.

Speaker 2:
[66:02] What is this Pokémon?

Speaker 1:
[66:03] It's other attack is, I'm not going to lie, I picked this one based on my favorite text and based on the Pokémon it was. I think I'll have a hard time getting this one. And then as we were sitting here doing it, I was like, I feel like both of these attacks could give it away kind of easily, but it ended up not giving it away. But the other attack is Moon Impact.

Speaker 2:
[66:24] Oh, it's the, I can't remember, it's Clefable or whatever?

Speaker 1:
[66:30] It is Clefable.

Speaker 2:
[66:33] Oh, that doesn't make sense. Acute hearing? I was on the dog thing.

Speaker 3:
[66:37] I was on the dog trend. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[66:39] I don't know. Yeah, I had to think about Fairy Pokémon, but I couldn't think of any of them.

Speaker 1:
[66:44] Gathida is not a Fairy Pokémon, by the way.

Speaker 2:
[66:47] Well, it looks like it could be.

Speaker 3:
[66:49] Yeah, well, it's not.

Speaker 2:
[66:51] Yeah, but it could have been, like in a different, the designers were just like.

Speaker 1:
[66:55] Florges is also from the generation after Black and White.

Speaker 2:
[66:58] Oh, it's like one, one. Yeah. One removed.

Speaker 1:
[67:01] It's X and Y. I actually watched funny enough. I like to go back and watch old Pokémon tournaments and like old stream matches like retro. Funny enough, on my recommended popped up a regional finals where one AzulGG was playing a Florges card.

Speaker 2:
[67:28] A regional finals?

Speaker 1:
[67:29] Florges EX you against Dylan Bryan. He was playing Metal Manectric, and you were playing Fairy Box.

Speaker 2:
[67:40] I was a genius metacall from Dylan Bryan, though. Like, it literally just beat everything, like everything.

Speaker 1:
[67:45] It seems like I don't know as much about that format because it's right before I started playing. But it seems like you kind of threw that first game. I'm not going to lie, bro. You got out to a pretty fast lead. He had nothing going on.

Speaker 2:
[67:56] And he killed my Mewtwo, right?

Speaker 1:
[67:59] I don't know. So it seems like that probably happened at some point. Yeah, I feel like there has to have been a mistake in there, though, because you like, dude, you were so far ahead, and he just literally did nothing for like three turns. If you're not winning that game, man, like.

Speaker 2:
[68:14] Maybe that I misplayed to the baby Aegislash, like KO for enough energy on the Mewtwo, and I put too many energy on my Mewtwo or something.

Speaker 1:
[68:20] I don't remember the situations exactly, because I also like, you know, didn't play back then.

Speaker 3:
[68:26] So I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[68:27] Actually, Dylan Bryan did scam a win against, I think he played against Mike Diaz in top four, and Mike Diaz was playing Virzian Genesect.

Speaker 3:
[68:34] And his deck shouldn't have beaten Virzian Genesect.

Speaker 2:
[68:38] I think Dylan Bryan played the Spirit Tomb. That stopped the Ace Backs. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[68:44] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[68:45] I did play it.

Speaker 3:
[68:46] I was prepped for Virzian Genesect.

Speaker 2:
[68:49] Maybe. Maybe. I did beat him, like, pretty handily in game two, if I remember correctly. And then game three was just, like, terrible. My Mewtwo got KO'd early. I had prized, like, a ton of energy. I just couldn't be like, he can't have my Mewtwo super early on. Yeah. And maybe I should have had him in game one.

Speaker 3:
[69:03] I don't remember. It was a long time ago.

Speaker 1:
[69:04] Never lucky, bro.

Speaker 2:
[69:06] I just remember game three. I just remember game three. Like, I didn't check my prize cards efficiently. And then I, like, went to do a play and it just was not available.

Speaker 3:
[69:13] But, like, there's no energy.

Speaker 2:
[69:14] But if I don't do that play, I just lose anyway. So it was like, it just didn't matter.

Speaker 1:
[69:18] You were kind of doomed, regardless.

Speaker 2:
[69:20] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[69:20] Those are tough ones.

Speaker 1:
[69:23] Well, Azul, better luck. In a couple weeks, I will look to close the lead next week in, I guess, that flavor text. But before our episode next week, there's a pretty big tournament happening, the Prague Regional Championships, first ever regionals held in the Czech Republic. Is it Czech Republic? Is it Czechia? I don't know, like, what the legal, what's legal name inserted here. I don't know what it should be these days, but it is in Prague, in that country in Europe. And yeah, I mean, it's the first tournament of the new rotation, of the new format. And it's also going to be the first tournament with the new top cut seeding change, where the player who is the higher seed and cut is allowed to choose first or second in game one of top cut. So I think that's going to really impact how those last couple of rounds are played by some of those players who are really high seeded, or who have really high winning records, you know?

Speaker 2:
[70:23] I actually played in a lot of the online tournaments have adapted to that. I played in an online tournament with the Ogre Pond Meganium, and it is something that came up. I played for high seed. I probably would have played in my last couple of rounds anyways, but I was like, I mean, I'm definitely playing them out now. Higher seed, that's huge.

Speaker 1:
[70:43] How did you do in the tournament?

Speaker 2:
[70:45] I got lost in top eight. I did go undefeated in Swiss, so I did go 9-0. Once I was eight, I was like, I may as well just play the last one out as well. Then I lost to a Shadow King Heracross, lost to the Honchkrow in top eight.

Speaker 3:
[70:58] Honchkrow is tough.

Speaker 2:
[70:59] I don't think I played.

Speaker 3:
[70:59] It does seem tough, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[71:00] I definitely could have played better in all the games, but...

Speaker 1:
[71:03] You got a judge in there?

Speaker 3:
[71:06] No.

Speaker 1:
[71:07] It probably doesn't make that big of a difference, honestly.

Speaker 2:
[71:10] Yeah, I mean, yeah, it'd be tough. I imagine it's going to be tough no matter what.

Speaker 3:
[71:14] Yeah, I had nothing.

Speaker 2:
[71:15] Well, I played a Briar, so like I had that as like a potential.

Speaker 1:
[71:18] And is Unfair Stamp your A-Spec?

Speaker 2:
[71:20] No, I switch over to the Prime Catcher.

Speaker 3:
[71:22] OK.

Speaker 2:
[71:23] It was actually... It's pretty good, though. The Prime Catcher is pretty good. It's hard to argue against the Prime right now.

Speaker 1:
[71:26] I feel like if you have Unfair Stamp plus Stadium Bump, that's probably your best shot to beat that deck, right?

Speaker 3:
[71:33] Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2:
[71:33] But yeah, no stadium bump.

Speaker 3:
[71:35] I can punch with Meganium, though.

Speaker 2:
[71:37] Meganium charge price cards are the one pressure, which is cool.

Speaker 3:
[71:40] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[71:41] I actually tweeted asking people their thoughts, you know, people who had played in Cups and stuff, because it's in Effective Cups, asking like what people's thoughts were on this new rule. Did anyone who entered in the bottom half of the bracket end up winning their Cup? Like how detrimental is it to not have that opportunity? And it seems like overall people like it. And it wasn't like too big of an advantage. Plenty of people in these replies talking about being the lower seed and winning, or the person who was the lower seed ended up winning the whole tournament. Xander says, I went in at first seed and loved it. That makes sense, right? So yeah, I mean, it seems like overall, I was just worried that it would be too strong of an advantage. Early preliminary results seem to indicate, does not feel that way at the moment for players, but at least we'll see. I think like a couple of regionals and we'll get a kind of good feel on if it's a big impact or not.

Speaker 2:
[72:43] I think it'll seem like a big impact. Like if it's like a, if we're in a format where like you really want to go second or you really want to go first, but I don't think that is this format. I don't know. I feel pretty comfortable in first or second. Like I've been choosing second with most decks. Apparently I'm just wrong with that though. Everyone says this is a go first format, but I don't know. I don't like going first. I feel like I just play less games when I go first, but I don't hate going first with most decks either. But maybe I'm overestimating the potential for turn 1 attacks. Well, I guess I'll just play a fan-ordered deck I'm choosing first, obviously.

Speaker 3:
[73:13] But I was going to say...

Speaker 1:
[73:17] I feel like the Uggrapon deck would like to go first too.

Speaker 2:
[73:21] Well, they got the fan-ordered deck, so that's a deck where I want to go first.

Speaker 1:
[73:23] Oh, it was a Noctowl build?

Speaker 3:
[73:25] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[73:25] When I played the... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[73:27] It wasn't like a Arbaliva.

Speaker 2:
[73:28] No Arbaliva.

Speaker 1:
[73:29] Because that build I know plays like a Noctowl line. Like, you're not...

Speaker 2:
[73:33] Yeah, that deck just feels miserable in general and feels extremely miserable when you go first.

Speaker 3:
[73:36] The Arbaliva deck.

Speaker 2:
[73:38] I cannot believe we're actually choosing first with that deck. Like, I just cannot fathom that that's correct. Like, I played the deck at decent amount.

Speaker 3:
[73:45] Going...

Speaker 2:
[73:46] Like, the deck feels bad. The deck going first feels miserable. Like, I just don't understand playing the deck or playing the deck and choosing first. Like, I...

Speaker 1:
[73:53] It is an extremely clunky feeling deck, for sure.

Speaker 2:
[73:56] Yeah. I was going to say, I think it'll feel worse in a format where you extremely want to go first or extremely want to go second. I don't feel like this is that format, but the format will feel worse if that's the case anyways. So, once again, I feel like this is one of the things, like, I still feel like the same way about I did about it the last time we talked about it, is where it's just like, I think this is a good thing because it just like helps, helps the players who are that much more prepared, be able to actually win the tournaments more consistently. Like, it just like evens out the, it makes things more consistent, I think, in the long run. In general, it won't matter that much and it's not going to be a huge impact. And when we're in a format where you really, where everyone really, really wants to go first, and it's a huge advantage to go first, the format is going to feel bad to begin with because everyone just really, really wants to go first, like an extreme. And that definitely wasn't the last format. I don't think that's this format. It could be next format where it's an extreme in wanting to go first. But then the format is going to feel bad even though the higher seed thing exists. Like it's not just going to be a higher seed thing that makes it feel bad. Because when you lose the coin flip in general, it's not going to feel good.

Speaker 1:
[74:57] I know you've played a lot of different decks the last few weeks. What have been kind of the standouts to you? What have seemed like the strongest decks to you?

Speaker 2:
[75:05] I mean, I played very little Dragapult, but I played against it a lot, obviously. So that deck feels like it's obviously a good deck. There's so much, man. I mean, that's what I said at the beginning of the podcast, dude. I feel like there's so much to figure out with so many decks right now. Like, I'll play a deck for like three or four hours on a stream, but then I'll already be thinking about the next iteration, and then I'll come back to it completely fresh with new ideas and revisit a deck. And I have so many ideas for so many decks to try out. But a lot of things feel really good. I think the big ones to me that stand out, though, is like Dragapult, obviously. But then like the one prize decks, like Okidoki, Alchazam, Festival Elite seems insanely good to me right now. Like you're beating like everything if you can just figure out your Dragapult matchup. And even the Dragapult matchup, like I've got Rapska in my build right now. And then I added, I want to put Genesect in it. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. We might just be able to beat Dragapult with Genesect and Rapska. Like that might be enough. So I don't know. The one prize dex feels really, really good to me.

Speaker 1:
[76:12] You gotta have formatted this better to be able to make the... Like, why is all of this over here on this picture? You posted this huge...

Speaker 2:
[76:20] I just used Trainer Hills.

Speaker 1:
[76:22] Dude, but if you go like this and screenshot just this area...

Speaker 2:
[76:26] I could have done it myself. That's more work though. I just like...

Speaker 3:
[76:29] But it makes the picture look so much better, dude.

Speaker 2:
[76:36] I don't know. I like the one prize dex though. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3:
[76:40] You're right. You're not wrong. I don't disagree.

Speaker 1:
[76:43] And here we go. Here's your tier list. So I didn't know... At first, when I looked at your tier list, I'm not going to lie, and I saw Festival Lead Alakazam to Dunsparce in their first tier. I was like, okay, it's a bait list.

Speaker 2:
[76:54] No, it's not.

Speaker 1:
[76:55] They feel really good.

Speaker 2:
[76:56] And you beat... Like everything that's not Dragapult, you just like kind of beat.

Speaker 1:
[77:00] I've played a good bit of Alakazam. I've played a good bit of Alakazam, and Alakazam feels incredibly strong.

Speaker 2:
[77:05] I will admit. Also, Alakazam players, going to Prague, put a Mist Energy in your deck to tech against the Retreat Lock. They bring up your Genesect. You attach Mist, you pass, you attach another Retreat Attack with Alakazam. And you can do the same thing with your Shaman if they're doing like the sob thing. Put the Mist Energy and Alakazam to tech for the Retreat Locker. Don't let them get you. Don't let them get you.

Speaker 1:
[77:23] Do you have to play the Genesect? I actually have been playing a build that does not have the Genesect. And it just feels so much smoother and cleaner to not play Genesect in the deck. Like I think there could be a point in the format where the Genesect feels necessary. But I don't know if that is the case right now, to be honest. People are not full in on Unfair Stamp. It does feel like it is the best A-Spec. But-

Speaker 2:
[77:47] Pult's gonna be super popular right now. If Pult gets checked, it'll become less popular. They're definitely all playing Unfair Stamp from what I can tell.

Speaker 1:
[77:53] Do you also have to play Scythe? That's another question.

Speaker 2:
[77:56] No, I think you can cut the duck. You get a space for the duck. That's where your Miss Energy gets involved. I was gonna say, I actually disagree a little bit. I think as the format progresses more, there'll be less Unfair Stamp. I think people are all in Unfair Stamp and we're starting to go away from Unfair Stamp as people figure out decks more. Like you said, it's the best A-Spec, so you naturally start with the best. Then, wait a second, let me try a Secret Box, let me try a Scoop Up Cyclone, and then I think we'll start to gravitate more away from Unfair Stamp. I think we're at the peak of Unfair Stamp right now heading into this tournament. I haven't really played it without it, but it's a big deal for the Dragapult matchup, I'd say that. Giving them the Unfair Stamp turn is kind of scary. That's the main reason I want to keep the Genesect around, is until we maybe see Dragapult numbers drop a little bit, I'm still kind of in on the Genesect. But it is a way bigger commitment in the Alchazam deck than something like Festival Lead. Like Festival Lead, it's super easy to just get the Genesect involved in the deck.

Speaker 1:
[78:48] I just want to ask about a couple of decks here, I guess, in their placement. So one is all the Froslass decks in fourth or lower. The Froslass and also the Starmie Froslass deck. The Starmie Froslass deck has seemed pretty reasonably popular for like a newer deck. You have it as literally your last deck on the tier list.

Speaker 2:
[79:14] This is the deck is, I mean, this is the thing, though, I said, this is what I said when I was making the tier list. Like, this is my objective opinion on the current format and metagame. But there is a lot of vibes. I haven't played every deck.

Speaker 1:
[79:29] Is an objective opinion?

Speaker 2:
[79:32] Well, the objective, it's my or it's my current objective opinion on the format and metagame for what I for my experience in the format. There's more to be played, though. That's what I'm saying. I feel like there's so much to figure out with every single deck right now.

Speaker 1:
[79:44] Is it objective too many times you're gonna start sounding like Grant, buddy?

Speaker 2:
[79:48] This is what I genuinely think. But with that said, Mega Frost last Army has been the most miserable deck I've played with so far. The deck just does not function. It feels terrible. You don't do anything huge. I like Mega Star Me Dusnarr way more. And I think Psyduck's down right now. So I don't know. That deck is... I was really impressed with that deck when I played it. Mega Star Me Dusnarr. That deck felt pretty good. I will say that, I guess, as far as the go first thing goes. When you play a deck that feels like you want to go first, it feels better than playing a deck that feels like it wants to go second. I still feel like there's a lot of decks that still just want to go second. When I played Zoroark and Lucario and stuff, I don't want to go first with these decks. Going first does not feel very good. But the Mega Star Me deck wants to go first. And then when you go second, you're like, this isn't terrible. But yeah, Mega Star Me Frost Last, it just feels terrible. I don't think it does that much when it does function. But once again, like I said, I'm going to revisit it. I'm still going to do my due diligence eventually. But for my current expertise in the format, Tier 5 deck and it's, I do have them, the way I have them ranked though, is based on how likely I would play them in a tournament. Like how much I want to play them in a tournament. So if I had to pick a Tier 5 deck, Mega Star Me Frost Last would be the bottom of the barrel. Not a fan.

Speaker 1:
[81:09] So three Polt decks here. You've got Dragapult, Straight Polt in Tier 1, Dragapult Dusknor and Dragapult Blaziken both in Tier 2.

Speaker 2:
[81:20] Yeah, this is mostly just going off of like where the community seems to be at. It seems like people have come to consensus. Straight Polt is the go-to and then the other two are kind of secondary.

Speaker 1:
[81:28] I thought this was your objective opinion.

Speaker 2:
[81:31] Well, yeah, objective opinion based on my experience in the format of the metagame, which includes like what everyone else is doing and playing. And I feel like I include some of that a little bit, like what people are like. I got to, I played very little with Dragpult. I've only played Dragpult Blaziken so far, but I'll take the communities like I haven't played with it. But straight Polt seems just as good, if not better. And it seems like the community thinks it's better. So that's good enough for me. We'll put that Polt in Tier 1. Blaziken could also maybe be a Tier 1 as well, though. Polt and Lore feels weaker, but it's still so good. I don't know. And people are not playing ducks right now. There's no ducks. And there's no reason to play ducks as well. So I wouldn't fault someone for not bringing the duck. And I wouldn't bring the duck either. Like if I'm playing Festival Lead or Alchazam to Dunsparce, I'm not ducking up. We'll put some Genesex in play and punch and stuff.

Speaker 1:
[82:18] A couple of fighting decks here in the second tier. You got Lucario and Cynthia's Garchomp, both in Tier 2. Cynthia's Garchomp, pretty high up on your list.

Speaker 2:
[82:25] Yeah. Another thing with my list, when I did it, I was saying where I'm at with it. Cynthia's Garchomp, I'm in between Tier 3 and Tier 2 from what I played with it so far. It feels pretty good. I definitely don't think I've been playing the best way to play the deck as well. I was getting pretty experimental. I tried a Grand Tree build with Petrel. Oh no, I had Cynthia's or Colrus' Tenacity, so you could attack turn 2 with it. But probably playing a little bit more straight up. That's the one thing I don't like about Cynthia's Garchomp, and I say it rarely happens where there's a deck that's better in best of 1 vs. best of 3. Cynthia's Garchomp really wants to go first. Going second with that deck does not feel very fun. You can fall so far behind so quickly. Yeah, you really want to go first. So I think that's an advantage for her to play in best of 1 because you can catch some people picking second because they feel like their deck wants to go second, and then you get a little bit of an advantage there. Yeah, you just lose the evolve. I tried to build that was choosing second, and I played 2 Bidoo in there, so I just did the Bidoo thing, and I felt like okay, it was nice to have something to fill the gap, and something to sacrifice as well because honestly giving up a Roselia or a Gible also feels really bad, but it's not the sacrifice of your energy to retreat into the Bidoo, so that also feels bad to lose your energy. But yeah, this is definitely the best Garchomp has ever been for sure, and it feels like it can compete with most of the top decks, but obviously grass weakness is pretty tough right now, and going first is a pretty big deal.

Speaker 1:
[83:50] So you've only got one slot box option up in the second tier.

Speaker 2:
[83:56] Your other kind of like all encompassing for the slot.

Speaker 1:
[84:00] OK, OK. Well, raging bolt is like I feel like similar, right? But you've got to get down a bit.

Speaker 2:
[84:06] Yeah, yeah, I guess I like separated those two, the ones that are more more designate, more designated like the raging bolts.

Speaker 1:
[84:11] Have you seen Ian Robb's raging bolt propaganda?

Speaker 2:
[84:15] I have. I don't think he's and that was another deck where I was like, I'm in between tier two and tier three for raging ball, because like I've only played the funny raging bolt deck, the pocket raging bolt deck deck that that deck felt pretty good. I felt like it was impossible to lose the Dragon Pulse. I'm not going to lie. Like I felt like you just set up an attack on like they don't have dust nor anymore. They can't make any aggressive plays. They can't accelerate towards Ursuluna like and they're so reliant on Crispin like you can like predict their plays like every single turn is you just get a ton of energy and play and then you just win the game.

Speaker 1:
[84:43] So yeah, I've played Ian's Raging Bolt List a decent bit the last week. I mean, it feels pretty good, man. It feels pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[84:54] And that's like one thing I've like felt so much. And honestly, and this is what I think I said, as we got closer to rotations, like I don't know if I care too much about countercatcher rotating as like IONO. And I still wish we kind of had IONO, I'm not going to lie. But man, I kind of like no countercatcher in the format. People got to make hard decisions on their turn. Do you want a boss or do you want to play Lily again? Like you don't have so much flexibility. And specifically, dude, like I have like PTSD, because every time I go into a Dragapult turn, I'll be like, man, I'm going to get countercatcher here and they're going to unfair. But wait, they can't they can't gust. I feel like I'm going to get gusted and hand disrupted every single turn going into Dragapult's turn. But then I remember they don't have countercatcher. Yeah, they have the boss or they have to Lily. You can't do both or Crispin.

Speaker 3:
[85:33] They're really locked into like, or you can just go run away, draw, run away, draw, run away, draw a boss.

Speaker 1:
[85:37] There you go. Alakazam, make it happen.

Speaker 2:
[85:40] I mean, that works, though. That works. That works. You have to be afraid of the boss against the Xam, more than the Pulse sometimes. But it definitely is like a big change of play when you play against Shrike of Pulse.

Speaker 1:
[85:49] I've been playing four boss in Alakazam.

Speaker 2:
[85:53] I don't hate that.

Speaker 3:
[85:53] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[85:54] I was on three because it feels fine, but you really just can't go wrong with four boss in like a lot of decks right now.

Speaker 3:
[86:01] Like the four boss.

Speaker 1:
[86:03] One of the interesting things I feel like to this format is there's a lot of like hard counters, it feels like to decks, right? Like Alakazam is not gonna love dealing with missed energy or the, what is it, rocky fighting energy, is that what it's called?

Speaker 3:
[86:19] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[86:20] Then you've got like, I mean, also like Team Rocket's Articuno, right? You just can't really beat that guy, like a Rockets deck. Lots of decks are just built in a way that they are like losing to Crustle and they're like accepting and fine with that, right? Like any sort of safeguardy. There's also like a Sylveon, I think that has a safeguard ability. Like there's some safeguard options out there. Feels like there's like answers in, like all the Ogre pond decks, right? Moltres could fit into any deck that could play a fire energy. And like that's a one prizer that can just guarantee, like as easily as the first turn, just take two prizes effectively for free for such little investment. Feels like there's a lot of potential for like counter play meta development in the future. But I feel like early on, we're just going to see like, it's too wide to narrow in on any of that stuff, right?

Speaker 2:
[87:12] That's why I actually think, that's why I think Zork is so good. Maybe not for this tournament coming up, but there's so much you can do with Zork. Like a lot of the A-Specs are good in there. People are playing Lopini. You can go Darmanitan. You don't have to go Darmanitan. So I'm kind of excited to see what Zork can become as the meta game stabilizes a little bit, because there's a lot of guessing, I think, going to this first tournament. There'll be some answers moving forward for kind of Zork to play around specifically. But yeah, I don't know. I think there's... I think the Alakazam and Festival Elite, if you just play with the decks, the decks are pretty good, but they are like the noob decks. People look at them as noob decks. So I think those decks generally get unwarranted. I mean, I think me and you felt the same way about Sara Ledge in the previous formats, but it's like those decks are just disregarded as noob decks are just like bad decks. I feel like Festival Elite and Alakazam are kind of treated similarly, but they're just kind of good. I don't know. I feel like they're being disrespected in general. And honestly, I'm rooting for someone to roll up and top-cup Prog with either of those decks. I think they're both really good right now.

Speaker 1:
[88:16] Yeah, I have less experience with the Festival Elite. I mean, one of the things is with those two decks is like any of the two-prize or three-prize decks, right? They don't love playing against... It's like you kind of... I roll whenever you're like, oh my gosh, I'm playing the Festival Elite on the ladder. You know, it's like, this is not real testing. I don't have to deal with this. People just think it's fake.

Speaker 2:
[88:40] Yeah. But they're pretty good. Also, their one-prize decks right now are like so much more forgiving of slow starts than these multi-prize decks in a lot of the matchups. And I'm not saying that makes the formats bad because of that, but it's just like, if you play some of these multi-prize, like Slot Boxes and Raging Bolts, you miss a turn and the game's over. But with Festival Elite and Alchemy, you can miss three turns. You can just chill and then you can still just win the match a turn or two behind. So I think there's a big strength in that as well, possibly. Maybe that's why they feel so good. And Rockets Haunch Card, I have a little bit lower, but that's probably the third best one-prize deck, right?

Speaker 1:
[89:17] I don't see any other ones. You had Okidoki on here.

Speaker 2:
[89:19] The Okidoki has a pretty tough time against Dragapalm, but if you can figure that out, if someone can crack that, that deck is really good, I think. But I don't know if that can be cracked, so that's where I'm kind of stuck on the Okidoki. Cause you just, the deck, I don't know, I think the deck destroys so many multi-prize decks, but the Dragapalm match up stuff.

Speaker 1:
[89:34] Let's talk about A-Specs a little bit. We already kind of did where it feels like a lot of people are really going to be honed in on Resets or Unfair Stamp, which certainly feels like the best A-Spec at the moment. But there's been still plenty of discussion. There's plenty of other good A-Specs out there. I mean, Prime Catcher is obviously still powerful. Secret Box is still a very good consistency option. There's been quite a bit of scoop up cyclone propaganda, it feels like. I don't know how real any of that is. Do you have any thoughts on the scoop up cyclone?

Speaker 2:
[90:07] Most recently, I tried it with Lucario, and it did feel pretty good in the Lucario deck.

Speaker 1:
[90:12] That's the, I think, this deck where it specifically feels the strongest.

Speaker 2:
[90:16] Yeah, basically, just because like you, at the very least, you can pick up Hariyama. Like you have that kind of fallback, where you can always get value out of your scoop up cyclone, and it's not just a dead card. You play heavy judge in the deck anyway, so like hand disruption is less of a valuable resource, so the unfair stamp becomes less important. But for like other decks, like I said, the Zorak seems like you can play a lot of things, but Zorak being able to go like unfair stamp boss, I've got an Acerola in my end Zorak right now. Unfair stamp Acerola is kind of cool. So, but I think like I'm starting to grab it for the more aggressive decks, I'm starting to gravitate away from the unfair stamps. I feel like I have unfair stamp in my festival lead, but I'm like, I don't think I need this in here. I think I can go with a secret box or something like that instead. I feel just like not that, I don't have Seaking in my build, so it's like super low value. I don't think Seaking is very good either. So, yeah, the Max belt is just kind of mid. Legacy Energy though, if you want, hey, we're already buying turns, let's buy another turn. I have Legacy Energy in my Alakazam right now. Like, I'm just getting another turn out there. Like, we're already at one prize deck.

Speaker 1:
[91:18] Alakazam has felt like, I think you have a hard time recovering against like Zerosic or an Unfair Stamp if you don't have Enriching Energy in your deck.

Speaker 2:
[91:28] I'm not getting Unfair Stamp, so I already got that solved.

Speaker 3:
[91:30] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[91:32] Yeah, Zerosic obviously can be tough. I mean, if people are going like the thing is so like, well, I've recovered from Zerosic. If they don't, but the thing is, if they don't disrupt your hand, you recover from Zerosic usually just fine.

Speaker 1:
[91:39] Like, well, the big thing I've experienced when playing Alakazam against a potential Zerosic is just making sure I play my cards, like put the Dunsparces in play, you know, like don't just hold on to them. Like, I can do it next turn. Nope. Do it now or else you're going to have to discard them.

Speaker 2:
[91:57] Do you have to make sure you go now? Yeah, it's like play it. If you play an active fear of Zerosic, it's very hard for Zerosic to beat you by itself. It's like when they, like, Soblock something for five turns in a row and then Zerosic to you or something like that. That's when it actually becomes more deadly. But don't get Soblock. Put the Miss Energy in. Trust me on that one. Put the Miss Energy in your Alakazam.

Speaker 1:
[92:16] I've also been playing... I've gone back and forth in Alakazam between playing and not playing Fan Rotom. Because I think you can totally set up without it, but it is...

Speaker 3:
[92:28] The card is so mid.

Speaker 1:
[92:29] But it is kind of... If you want a chance against some of the like Missed Energy or an Articuno type thing... Well, I've been able to successfully, with Fan Rotom in the mix, defeat Articuno in Crustle. I don't think it would work very well against a Rocket Stack, but the Articuno in the Crustle, I was able to overcome.

Speaker 2:
[92:56] It was a pretty tough.

Speaker 1:
[92:57] It was a slog.

Speaker 2:
[92:58] That should be almost impossible, though.

Speaker 1:
[93:00] My opponent did misplay. They played their Lana's a turn. They played their Lana's a turn before the thing was going to get knocked out. The Rockets Articuno.

Speaker 2:
[93:09] I think the argument for the Fan Rotom comes out, do you want an early game attacker? But I'm playing Forward Candy. So like that is my Alchazam just becomes my early game attacker. And like, yeah, previously in the past, there definitely was some setups where it was like, I see a little bit more out of this buddy Poffin. But now we have like the, whatever the energy is called. So it's like, you just get so many basics so quickly with the psychic energy. You're just like not whiffing set up. So then the Fan Rotom just clogging your bench hurts you in the mid late game when you get unfair after he gets a row sick.

Speaker 1:
[93:36] And it's a thing that can get saw blocked. But if you only have to Dunst personnel, cause I am, you don't got to worry about getting saw blocked.

Speaker 3:
[93:43] I'm not getting saw blocked.

Speaker 1:
[93:44] And if you're not playing the stupid Genesect.

Speaker 2:
[93:47] I like the, I want the Genesect, but the other guys.

Speaker 1:
[93:51] No, no, no, get Genesect out of there. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[93:55] I like the Genesect. But I can see, that's what I'm saying. There's so, I feel like there's just so much to try out with all these decks. I feel like the, from what I've played and what I've seen, I feel like the ceiling is still, like I said, I haven't like grinded one deck for a week.

Speaker 3:
[94:05] So maybe I'm just wrong on that.

Speaker 2:
[94:06] And if I just did that, I'd be like, oh, no, this deck solved, grind another deck, this deck solved. But I think there's just more to the Pokémon TCG than, than we currently see. And there's just, I'm very interested to see what, how the metagame stabilizes a little bit with Prague and like where we go from there. So I'm really excited for this tournament coming up. And then the following tournaments after that.

Speaker 1:
[94:24] Yeah, I think we will see lots of metagame evolution. It's an exciting time for sure.

Speaker 2:
[94:30] Yeah, yeah. And also, like I haven't, like Noctowl feels insanely good right now. Like I've only played the Ogre Pawn Meganium Noctowl deck. I haven't messed with any Tarot Box. But if Noctowl feels that good in that deck, like I got it, I like the Tarot Box decks. There's got to be something there for sure with Tarot Box. I'm excited to see if anything like that pops up at Prague. And you can put a Genesect and an Air Balloon in there. And you just don't get unfair stamped. I think Dragapult is like... Not deceptively, but I think it's pretty weak. If you can't play unfair stamped as Dragapult, it's such a big part of your win condition. I was playing Lucario with Genesect Air Balloon. If I ever got that combo down against Pult, I was like, the game is over. They cannot win the game. It's done. That's why I'm such a big fan of a single judge in most decks. Yeah, I'm trying to put Genesect in literally everything right now. Anything I can like, it fits reasonably in, which is like anything that plays tools already. I'm putting Genesect in the deck.

Speaker 1:
[95:26] That's another reason I don't like it now because I'm brown.

Speaker 3:
[95:28] Why? Why?

Speaker 2:
[95:29] Why? Why don't you force the tools? Yeah, it's like less convenient in there. I do agree. You have to force the tools, but they're lucky helmets. Like those are good cards for the deck anyways.

Speaker 3:
[95:37] Like, yeah, sure.

Speaker 1:
[95:39] Did you try the amulet I talked to you about last week?

Speaker 2:
[95:42] I did not try the amulet.

Speaker 1:
[95:43] The amulet though, it seems, if you're playing the genus deck, the amulet, I hope, bro, get it in there. Get you a rare Candy Algaezan boss on the next turn.

Speaker 2:
[95:51] I feel like at that point, it's just hard to argue against Legacy Energy. Because like, if you're just drawing on, if you're not drawing off tempo, Legacy buys you the turn anyways. If you're drawing on tempo, like you just become, get to an unwinnable board state for them to deal with. I don't think the enriching is bad, but.

Speaker 1:
[96:05] OK, anything we haven't encompassed here that you want to talk about or you feel like the people would want to hear. Oh, before we make some predictions.

Speaker 2:
[96:14] I said, like once again, in the same vein, I'm just like, I feel like this deck has a lot of potential, which I feel like for a lot of decks, Team Rockets Mewtwo, like I feel like that deck is actually really, really good. Like someone brought this up into in my stream when I was doing the tier list. They were like. How was Rockets Mewtwo tier three when it beats everything in tier two and tier one besides Festival Lead? And I was like. I mean, you're not wrong, but the deck doesn't feel that good when I've played it so far, so it's definitely a consistency issue. So if someone can just like. Find the best Team Rockets Mewtwo deck. Or close to it like that's a really good play right now, I feel like I feel like it hasn't been I've seen a different extremes in lists with like a lot of psychic energy, a lot of protons, like extremes in all different directions. I like bug catching set because finding energy is important, but finding your Pokémon is also kind of cool. So overall, the deck just hasn't felt that good. So that's why I have it in tier three. But they weren't wrong when they said that, like it does kind of be all of tier two.

Speaker 1:
[97:11] And I haven't felt that good. This guy's got bug catching set in his Rockets deck and he's wondering why.

Speaker 2:
[97:17] When you find the energy in the Pokémon, we need to find like we need a mix. We need to make Pokipads, only find Pokémon. But the end of getting our energy attachments is just so important with the deck. Like with the energy attachments feel terrible.

Speaker 1:
[97:31] All right, well, let's make some predictions for the Prague Regional Championships. You'll be doing a coast stream, I assume.

Speaker 3:
[97:36] Yes, Azul. Yep. Yep.

Speaker 2:
[97:37] It's going to be early. It's like two thirty a.m. West Coast time. So.

Speaker 3:
[97:41] Yeah, I don't know how much of those I'll be catching, but maybe the finals into the finals.

Speaker 1:
[97:47] All right. Three predictions here this week. Azul, what a spec do you think the winning deck will play?

Speaker 2:
[97:57] Well, I want to put some faith behind my Festival lead in Alakazam placements. I like Legacy Energy in Alakazam, but most people play Enriching Energy. So I'm going to go lean towards Festival lead. And I'm going to say. I mean Unfair Stamp isn't bad in the deck. Unfair Stamp is such an easy answer. I'm going to, you know what? I'm going to go Legacy Energy. I don't know if it will be through Festival lead, because that's also a card you can play in there. But I'm going to say Legacy Energy gets there.

Speaker 1:
[98:24] It does seem like a pretty strong card for sure. It feels like Unfair Stamp would be kind of the cop out answer. It feels like the card that most people are playing. But I am really like in Alakazam right now. So I'm going to go with the Enriching Energy.

Speaker 3:
[98:45] All right. All right.

Speaker 2:
[98:46] I like it.

Speaker 1:
[98:48] And I think that, yeah, I definitely could see Alakazam just spiking the whole thing. I mean, it just won the Champions League and they have the red card. You know, like...

Speaker 2:
[98:58] Yeah. You know, and it makes things so much worse for the deck. Like now you don't even play Genesect. Like, as it kind of be a catch all, like you have to like pivot.

Speaker 1:
[99:09] How many Dragapult decks will be in Top Cut? It sounded like you're feeling like Dragapult could be a little fraudulent?

Speaker 3:
[99:17] Question mark. Not fraudulent.

Speaker 2:
[99:20] It's definitely going to be hated against. And it just feels whenever I play against Dragapult, the deck feels so much more vulnerable. They can still do some crazy stuff. They usually can't do the crazy stuff if they don't have Unfair Stamp, though. That's like when I take away their Unfair Stamp, I'm like, I don't care what they do. It does not matter. So that's going to be so quite a few, though. I don't know how many players are registered for Prog. I don't know what kind of asymmetrical cut we're looking at here. I'm going to go with, I'm going to say it gets hated on. I'm going to say people, and it's going to get, I'm going to say three. We'll go three. I think it's a little bit under, but.

Speaker 3:
[99:55] I think that's probably the safe bet.

Speaker 1:
[99:57] I mean, if there's like a 12 person cut, I think it's four. But if it's like an eight person cut, I think.

Speaker 2:
[100:03] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[100:03] Three makes sense.

Speaker 3:
[100:04] Are we looking at like a 15 person cut? Are we there?

Speaker 2:
[100:07] I don't know. I don't know the numbers for Prog. So who knows?

Speaker 3:
[100:09] I'm going to go with four for Dragon Ball Dex and cut.

Speaker 1:
[100:13] It's any Dragon Ball variant. And then finally, Azul, our go to our favorite, pick a player to make top cut. I'm going to pick Tord Recklove.

Speaker 2:
[100:25] Okay. Good. Good. Good pick there, buddy. Yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to remember exactly who I saw who was like, I think there's quite a few players going to actually. Henry is going, right? I think he tweeted he was going.

Speaker 1:
[100:38] I think he did tweet. He tweeted about being freed from the shackles of Gardevoir at Prog.

Speaker 2:
[100:42] Yeah, he's been playing a lot of Dustinor Psychic Box, and I think that deck is pretty mid, so I don't know if I want to. I would definitely want to go for a player outside of Europe.

Speaker 3:
[100:58] That's the one I would be rooting for.

Speaker 2:
[101:01] I'll go with Henry Chow. Yeah, that sounds fine. Or actually, hold on, hold on. I might stay on the Henry Train.

Speaker 1:
[101:08] Oh, oh, oh.

Speaker 2:
[101:12] I don't know if Brand is going, though. I'm going to quick scroll through his Twitter, see if anything pops up.

Speaker 1:
[101:22] I saw him walking through his park earlier today.

Speaker 2:
[101:25] Yeah, does he have enough time to get to... He could be in Prague right now in a park, though, I guess. All right, we'll stick with Chow, we'll stick with Chow. Yeah, I do believe he is going, so I'm going to stick with Henry Chow.

Speaker 1:
[101:37] And yeah, I'm going to pick Tor Drekloff. A little bit of a cop out, but I mean, come on. If the goat's on the table, you know, if you could round one Drek, or James, or Michael Jordan, I mean, there'd be a debate there about which one you would take, I guess, but you would take them.

Speaker 2:
[101:50] There's only one of them, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1:
[101:53] I'm taking Tor. All right, well, that is going to do it for our episode this week. We will be back next week, and of course, break down the results from Prague. But yeah, Azul, you got anything else you want to say before we get out of here to the bonus episode?

Speaker 2:
[102:09] Oh, one, I guess I just want to reflect on the statement about Orlando from TPCI. You brought up some really good points. Like is this forced? If it is forced, like that's not good enough from TPCI for sure. And then, although like, I think it definitely sounds like, at least from what I said, that I'm blaming the judges. I don't want that to like, like I'm not saying I'm blaming the judges. It's just like, I just don't see where a disconnect could have happened, where it's like, Makani can be right, and the statement can be right, unless the judges were dishonest in their statements. So that's all I want. I want to sort of clear that up as far as that goes. But yeah, there definitely is like more to it than I kind of thought once we started getting into and talking about it. And it feels kind of unresolved, you know, kind of reflecting back on it. I feel like that, like despite them making a statement, being transparent, the immediate response from Makani and Firestar, the whole thing just kind of feels super unresolved, which is like really unfortunate. You'd hope that this would lead to some more better resolution, right? So I don't know if we're going to hear any more from Makani or Firestar. I doubt we'll hear any more from TPCI. So it might kind of die here for the most part. But yeah, I think this leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth, and it seems like most of the community's mouth, and I think that's fair and warranted. And I don't, I don't, there's more TPCI could do, but I don't think they're going to do anything else. So I think it's just going to die here, unfortunately.

Speaker 1:
[103:36] I don't think there will be another statement.

Speaker 3:
[103:38] Yeah, I agree. Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1:
[103:41] Well, thanks to everyone for listening, as always. If you did enjoy, please be sure to leave us a like, a review, rate and comment, subscribe. Those things do help us out a bunch. Let us know you're enjoying the content we're putting out, and it does help more people discover the podcast as well. If you want to stay up to date with me and Azul, the best place to do it is over on X. You can follow myself at ChipRicheyAzul at AzulGG, and you can also follow the podcast at Uncommon Underscore Energy. We should have a new video on the Uncommon Energy channel coming out in the next week or so, perhaps by this end of this week, definitely early next week. So keep your eye out for that. It's going to be a fun one.

Speaker 2:
[104:18] Appreciate the support as always. Good luck, Henry, over in...

Speaker 1:
[104:21] And toward Prague.

Speaker 2:
[104:24] In Prague, we'll catch y'all. Next Wednesday, we'll shoot back to our regularly scheduled episodes. Next Wednesday, 7 a.m. Eastern.