Are Coin Flips Bad For Competitive Pokemon TCG? | Uncommon Energy Episode 219

About this episode

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Transcript

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This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen, snacks, a stapler. The new PayPal app is like that but for your money. Shop, pay, manage your account and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started, see paypal.com protectionturnms. This message is brought to you by Apple Card With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, merch or tickets to the game. Plus it can be used anywhere. MasterCard is accepted no matter your team, no matter where you shop. Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and more@applecard.com hello and welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Energy Podcast. On this week's episode we'll be talking about the results of the Baltimore Regional Championships which took place this past weekend. I was there casting, Azul was watch partying the event so he was keeping up with it all throughout. Give our thoughts on the results and all of that. Of course we will talk about flips in the game. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Should tournaments be decided on a coin flip? We'll also have guess that flavor text everyone's favorite segment of the podcast. And then we're going to close out this week by talking about the Brisbane and Frankfurt Regional Championships which are both taking place this coming weekend with the brand new 30th celebration set legal for play. Though you may not know it if you watch the tournaments because you might not see any of the cards. But we'll talk about that and give our thoughts all in this episode. And then of course we will have our bonus episode exclusive to YouTube channel members and Spotify subscribers. If you're looking to get a little bit of extra Azul and chip content and also support us in a really great way, the bonus episode, the YouTube channel member slash Spotify subscriber, whichever way you listen is a really great option to get you some more good quality content and support. What we are doing here My name is Tripper G joined here as always by my friend and co host Azul gg What's going on Azul? How are we doing? Did you enjoy Watch Partying Baltimore?

Yu-Gi-Oh getting back to the watch Partying was fun. Not just watch party in Baltimore but also day three of Champions League. For anyone who's unfamiliar with a new format for Champions League, but maybe not for everyone. I heard that the next Champions League is actually going to be a two day event. This was a three day event where they effectively had two day ones to try and get more people to be able to play in the tournament. So it was like 5, 000 players Day 1, 5000 players Day 2 There was a typhoon and they were only going to stream the second day one. So we didn't get to stream for the first. For day one of the tournament, we only had a day two stream.

So the first day one happened. Right, Right. It happened. Those players, they qualified for day two and then the typhoon. What the. The. The potential of the typhoon getting going into the area of Yokohama was too risky to run the second day one, so they just didn't run it. And those players just didn't get to play in the tournament basically, which kind of sucks. I did hear the they were compensated with like higher chances of getting into the next Champions League, so their account will have a higher odds of getting to the next Champions League. But that was like all that was. That's all I heard that the players were like compensated for, which kind of sucks. But it's just. I mean natural disasters exist. Like it's sucks but it. So like day two was a lot was half as big as it would have been if the second day one hadn't happened. But I heard that the next Champions League is just gonna be a two day event. So it's not gonna. This. It one-of-one be a constant thing, but it seems like there's a format they're gonna probably try and utilize in the future. I would assume so that way they can have effectively bigger tournaments and who knows, maybe one day we'll get to the point where we'll actually have to do something like that. Similarly, I don't think we're there quite yet, but you know, maybe for like Naic we could honestly do something like that.

Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh And I, I feel like we're still like maybe five years out from even having that discussion, but because we have some pretty big hauls here. Right? Like we can still have quite a bit bigger tournaments than we currently are having, so don't need to worry about that quite yet over here in the States. Yu-Gi-Oh it was fun to get back to watch partying for sure. A ton of fun. I kind of didn't realize how much I missed it because we'd been. I had done. Hadn't done it for a couple months. Now, but I really do enjoy the. The watch parties. I didn't watch all Champions League. And we're not going to talk about Champions League this week because we just don't have a ton of results for it. But we'll be talking about it next week. Once more of the top 32 decklists kind of get filled out. There's more for us to talk about and take a look at.

Yu-Gi-Oh it's kind of funny, too, because they're playing in a different format than we are. Where Delta is legal, but 30th celebration is not legal. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh but we're about to play in a format where Celebration is legal, but 30th or the Delta Rain doesn't exist or whatever. Yu-Gi-Oh definitely interesting times. I thought we were past these moments, and we had been past them for a while. We've been pretty consistent, like, Keeping up with. But they want to do this big 30th celebration global release thing, which is more of a marketing gimmick than anything. Like, it's not like, anything to do with, like, any kind of, like, competitive. Competitive integrity on the plain side of things, unfortunately, it really is just, like, a try and, you know, hype up the set release. You know, it is a big set release, especially on, like, the collection side of things, the playing side of things, like you said. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Not so much, maybe. Yu-Gi-Oh Besides that, this week I also went and saw the new Resident Evil movie. I'm a pretty big fan of the franchise. I've actually never played any of the old Resident Evils. I've only played, like, the new. The three new games, which are quite a bit different than the older games because like, they're like first person versus third person. Although the newest one is third person and first person. And I've also seen all the other Resident Evil, like, movies and, like, animated stuff as well. And they're like, okay, to be honest, but this was actually a really good movie. A bit different from the other movies. Anyone who's, like, watched any of the. Or seen any of the commentary around it since it's released, there's a lot of people who are hating on it because it isn't quite like the other stuff, but this is just. It was just like, a good movie in the universe. And that's the kind of stuff I like personally. Like, even, like, on, like, the Star wars side of things, I don't need. We don't need Jedis and lightsabers every time. Andor is literally the best thing in the Star wars universe, the media thing in the Star wars universe, that exists. So it's like I'm a big fan of just good material in cool universes. So I really like the new Resident Evil movie. And I guess last thing to mention, Laic Reg was kind of shadow Tribute I think that's pretty crazy.

Yu-Gi-Oh I think the dates and information were. Were out there. Like I was aware. I actually told someone I was in a discord call with someone. I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh are you going to Laic? Because registration is like literally right now. But Yu-Gi-Oh the first wave happened at 3pm and if you're listening to this episode within the first hour that it comes out, you have an hour from when this episode Tribute Do you get ready for the next registration? Because literally happening at 8:00am East coast time, if I did my math correctly. So we upload this episode at 7:00am Eastern and 8:00am Eastern, I believe is when the next wave for LIC will drop. But Yu-Gi-Oh it seems a lot of people seem to not be aware that it was dropping when it Tribute today, which was. It just feels like there was. There was definitely a lack of communication. I feel like Play Pokemon have been tweeting out when most regionals registration was going live in the past. Yu-Gi-Oh in the past they have talked about the ICS as well. I mean, I didn't register myself personally. I'm not going. I was planning to go in at the beginning of the year, but not going to be happening for me this season. I'll try and make my way out to. To Brazil next year. But Yu-Gi-Oh it definitely feels like a little bit of dropping the ball on TPCI's part in terms of delegating that to whoever should be doing that. It felt like Play the Play Pokemon Twitter account was going to become the hub for some of that information to be shared, but definitely Tribute the ball this time. A little, little unfortunate for how things had been looking going to the season, but Yu-Gi-Oh that's. That's how my week's been. What about you, Chip? What was it like at Baltimore?

Baltimore was cool. Yu-Gi-Oh Baltimore was fun. It was a good tournament. Yu-Gi-Oh I actually really enjoyed like a lot of the matches we had on stream. The tournament as a whole itself as well. Like we'll talk about some of the decks and stuff. It didn't feel like overly dominated by the same Dragap60. Like yes, Hedrick's new list. Like Liam got top eight with it and it was good and people played it and did well. But like, you know, there was like Seeing, like, Henry Chow's deck and, like, people willing to innovate and try new things was definitely cool. Like, and then high drapple making the finals a deck that we haven't really seen much at all of, at all like, since before Naic, really. Yu-Gi-Oh it was definitely a fun tournament. Also, I do have to give a shout out because I got, I think, the best gift I've ever been given by a viewer or listener to, like, the podcast. And it was from Seth. So shout outs to you, Seth, who walked up to me on, I think it was on Sunday and handed me these classics.

Not classics. They are classics, but they're so old, they don't even say classic on them. They are just dragon shields. These are like og og brand new dragon shields. The date on the bottom is 2006. That's kind of insane, actually. It's actually like, this is like, crazy right here. He said he found them at like a consignment shop and knew that he had to give them to me. So huge shout outs to you, Seth. I mean, genuinely, like, I. I was like, dude, these are. This is like a fine one-of-one Like, I have to have the, like, perfect occasion to crack these to like, play them at a tournament or something like that. For those who don't know, these are like elite level sleeves right here. These OG dragon shields. Glossy, not matte. They call them classics now, but back then they were just dragon shields because that's how they made them.

Yu-Gi-Oh they used to be the only thing that dragon shield made was that that style of sleeves would now become the. The classic. And the pink color specifically was like one of the more popular ones as well. Back in the day, that was like, maybe the most popular, to be honest, was the pink ones. People were all about the pinks also. I am still doing. I haven't talked. I didn't talk about it the last couple weeks because I wasn't doing it while we were recording. I am still hunting for shiny Celebi. I've have had a couple people ask me about it at Worlds and at Baltimore. Let's get a check right here. Celeb. No, it's green.

I feel like a lot of people are doing that right now. They're doing the. The grind to get the shinies while they can before, Yu-Gi-Oh they lose their access. But I did want to update because some. Several people had asked me if I was still doing. Looking for the celeb. I am still looking for the celeb and I'm going to be resetting during this episode. I'm getting a little bit worried for you, Chip. I'm not gonna lie. I've been saying that you have plenty of time, but now I'm getting worried because, I mean, you never seem that confident, but now you got me not feeling Zebra confident for you.

It's only a 1 in 8,192 chance. Yu-Gi-Oh But I feel like you could at least do it. I mean, I know it's not how it works, but you'll definitely be able to do it at least 8,000 times. I feel like before. I feel like I'm probably pretty close to odds on it for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh So it's. How much further do you need to go? Yes. And then other than that. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh I did the thing again that I did at Worlds where I, like, went around and try. I didn't get to do it as much on day one, but on day two, I tried to every round. I wasn't casting. Go catch some gameplay of, like, the things happening out on the tournament Fleer of players playing. Even if, like, some of these moments aren't, like, necessarily the most exciting ones, it's still like just updates of things happening at the tournament. It is coolest whenever you get to highlight, like, an actually cool, unique play or something funny happening. But people seem to enjoy seeing it as well, so I'm gonna try to keep doing them at future tournaments that I'm at and the rounds I'm not backstage.

This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen, snacks, a stapler. The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money, shop, pay, manage your account and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security, and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com protectionturnms. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere. MasterCard is accepted no matter your team, no matter where you shop. Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more@applecard.com I think I honestly, I think like the. That's like a big thing that I think is missing in the. And that's what I kind of wanted to do, like the. The interviews kind of stuff that I Did world is like on like on Fleer reporting at major tournaments. Like this kind of thing I think is like a big thing that people want because we have the live stream. But that's only so much information right. Like from watching the official live stream in Baltimore. So you doing like these kind of things is like Zebra cool and I think it's like something that's kind of missing in the space right now.

Yu-Gi-Oh in general but there was a big point of discussion around this first one I posted which was of Andrew Hedrick, you know, playing, winning his game. This video Azula has 500000 views and it's a lot from the quote retweets and it's of people talking about the condition of Hedrick's cards. Yu-Gi-Oh Being warped and pringled up which they are. But Yu-Gi-Oh a lot of people's reaction to it was like how is this not count as marked cards? Or look at what's. We'll look at what they're allowed to do in the Pokemon space.

Top three posts right here. The Absolute Pringles that are being played with here. I've had a warning slash game loss for less. How are these not considered marked cards? Bros whole field looks like this. This is the best Pokemon player has ever looked. He mogs the Hunter Butler 2000. A classic Tate tweet right there. That is an all time tweet. It is funny to read someone like Trevor Allen's tweet though because he literally answers his own question in his tweet. How are these not considered marked cards? The whole field looks like this. So how could you pick out one card A from card B if they're all the same like you answered your own question. That's why they're not marked. For anyone who's curious as to why Hedrick does not receive penalties for his deck, it's because it's not about a card being warped. It's about can you identify one card amongst the other cards consistently. And the answer for Hedrick's deck because as you'd imagine he's been deck checked a lot recently. The answer is no, you can't pick out card A from card B because they are all so similar. It's not about the.

Yu-Gi-Oh Lothar Hearthstone I guess here says because someone said that to him, when every card is marked, no card is marked. And he said when every card is marked, it's harder to see which card is marked differently. Which is actually that that taken itself is fair. But Lothar hasn't like, like physically Beckett up Hedrick's deck and tried to identify card A over card B. So how can you say one card is marked Lothar here? Honestly, it's kind of disappointing. I used to watch Lothar when he, like, when I was more into Hearthstone back in the day, I used to watch his Twitch stream. But like, this is just such a disappointing take in general because, like, you don't know. You haven't like Beckett up and looked at his deck. If you could pick up and look at his deck and then point it out, it's like, okay, sure, fair game, right?

But like, well, also, dude, he plays with digital cards. Like, he doesn't there can't be. Right. Oh, for Lothar specifically. Yu-Gi-Oh it's a yu-gi-oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh sure, sure. For his. For. For Hearthstone. So anyways, Yu-Gi-Oh a lot of people had bad takes on. On Hedrick's. Hedrick's deck here. The point that, yes, if they are all like, marked and then they're all marked differently, that would be a way that Hedrick could be cheating. But with how many times I don't think Hedrick is cheating and with how many times he's been deck checked and I trust the deck check process. Like, I think it's reasonable. Reasonable to assume Hedrick is not cheating. His car are not marked. Remember, it's not about. Yu-Gi-Oh because the thing is that I think people draw to is like. Like we saw like when a couple of the retweets people are like, what? I've been penalized for less. It was like, Yu-Gi-Oh because like, you're one of computer search is literally warped and all your other. Your cards are straight. Of course you're gonna get penalized for that. When all your cards are warped, it's a little bit different. I was surprised to see how many people actually had that take. It's because there's quite a few.

Also shout outs to Heracross here, who is a fellow Dragon Shield classics enjoyer, one of the few. There are dozens of us. There are dozens of us. But Yu-Gi-Oh Baltimore was good and I don't really think much else to report. Yu-Gi-Oh fun times. Cool to see some, like, old names coming back and playing that, like, haven't played in a while. I feel like that happens at the start of like every season. Right. Getting to people, like, are kind of rejuvenated, Want to give it a shot, see how the first couple tournaments go. So. But Yu-Gi-Oh with that being said, I mean, we can just go ahead and get rolling right into the results of the tournament. Azul this was the largest regional championships of all time by a decent number as well.

Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't. Is it actually 3.1? 3.1. And AIC was bigger? Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, my gosh. I didn't even realize. I didn't realize we were breaking record by 400 players by a decent margin. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh we. Honestly, we didn't really talk about it very much on the stream, to be honest. Which is maybe a little bit of a thing we should have done. But, like, I had no clue. I didn't see any tweets about it. Mentioned it. You wouldn't have been listening to us say it one-of-one Yu-Gi-Oh but I feel like when it is happening, I'm aware of it. Sometimes it'll be a graphic on the screen. Biggest regional of all time, like. Yu-Gi-Oh but the ball, it's almost one of those things where it's like, dude, every tournament at this point is the biggest regionals of all time.

Yu-Gi-Oh but that's kind of hype too. Like, if every tournament, like, it just like, another one, another one, another one, another one, man. So, I mean, Yu-Gi-Oh we're definitely gonna. I like, what was the big. How big was Baltimore last time we were in Baltimore? 3.1 here, like 2. Yu-Gi-Oh 2300. Yu-Gi-Oh not bad. Plus 800 players. Not bad at all. That's good to see. I mean that once again, like, Pokemon doing it or gaming gen Go Gaming gen. And Pokemon are getting it done. At least over here in the states. Like, the tournaments are bigger. Year after year, the sizes are increasing. You know, we're headed in the right direction.

Well, let's talk about some numbers here, starting with the meta, where Zork was 30 of day one all crazy. Dragapult was 30 of the day one meta, all variants combined. And then with zoark behind it, 7.7, Alakazam 7.3. All these numbers very similar to the World Championships, to be honest. I mean, Dragapult a little bit. A good bit less. Yu-Gi-Oh But we've talked about, you know, the reasons behind that. But like in Zoark, Alakazam all normal, but basic box half as popular. Yu-Gi-Oh they wanted the World Championships.

That is interesting. For sure, that the two most interesting numbers is I expected Dragon Ball to be around 35 and basic box falling off so much was also kind of a surprise. I kind of expected it to be. I expected it in Alakazam to be fighting for second. And I'm actually surprised that Zork is as popular. So those are the big Three things that stood out to me. Zoric, more popular than I thought. I. Dragon Ball less popular than I thought. And then Basic box, less popular than I thought as well.

Yu-Gi-Oh maybe once we talk about the results of this tournament, some people will start to finally put the Zork deck down. But Yu-Gi-Oh they, they're too committed I think. Take a look at the actually just click on the one-of-one rates for a second there. It's because I'm curious like out of like what had like the basic box. Basic box, buddy. Yu-Gi-Oh And Slow King behind it. Let's go to the conversion though. Let's take a look at the conversions. That's always my favorite number. And then just sort it by. Yu-Gi-Oh So the first relevant deck. Basic box again.

Pretty good right now, man. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Not bad. Definitely a deck that I've been sleep well. I don't know. It's, it's, it's, it's good. I, I But like it does have its bad matchups for sure. Those bad matchups. Still a really solid converter as well though. It's not bad even whenever it's so, so popular. But Yu-Gi-Oh we can go ahead over to day two where we see Dragapult. Not the big jump I think we're used to seeing at regionals. It's been going like it is still a bump, but it's been going like 30 to like 42, 45. Now it's 30 to 36.

I don't think there's anything else down there that's too interesting. Double check. Like it in the. I think you're right. It was like a, it was like a. Yu-Gi-Oh 43. Like 30. Right. 32 to 43 increase. Yu-Gi-Oh Not quite as big, although I guess I'd say, I mean one thing that I think is probably one of the reasons for that is people are just getting better at playing against Dragapult because I think that was like one of the, the reasons that Dragon Blue Ice or that carried to some of its early success earlier success is just learning how to beat a deck like Dragapult is harder than learning how to beat the average deck. Just because there's so much you have to account for constantly. That's probably part of the reason we're starting to see it get pulled back a bit in terms of its success.

Day 2 one-of-one Rates Basic box of the, you know, higher play decks 56 and then Delmise 54 and we'll look at the standings. But there were two in the top 32. Azula. I cannot say I expected that. I Mean, I've been a hater of this deck since day one. I think it makes day zero, honestly. Yu-Gi-Oh I think it makes a decent amount of success or amount of sense. It is favored against the most popular deck, at least two of the versions. It's favored against Dusknoir and Hammers Laser. Can things get a little bit weird and then you auto one-of-one Alakazam, which is like maybe the most Hyper deck post worlds heading to this tournament. I feel like. So I feel like the meta was trending towards more favorable for the Delmise deck. And I don't know, maybe there's more there. It is always one of those things with something like a Dumbais deck where it's like it's so underplayed and then also it's going to be hard to get some really high level players to ever pick up the. The deck that it's really hard to know where the ceiling is for something like the Delmise deck in the current format. But you know, it just takes like anyone wanting to, you know, it takes. I mean we already see two players in top 32. They could run it back in Louisville or something like that. We could see what the Europeans come up with it. And then. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean like I said, we have Louisville coming up as well. There's like I. I wouldn't be shocked to start to see it bump into the top. The top cuts potentially.

Let's look at the top eight and it was a rare clean top eight cuts though there probably should have been nine players. There was a questionable ID in the final round. Yu-Gi-Oh it's one of those situations where it's like how aware were they that x21 was potentially not going to make cut? There was a decent shot, honestly, for a pretty big cut. Yu-Gi-Oh a pretty big cut. If any of these. So it's right here. Bradley and Matthew intentionally drew. Yep. And unintentionally knock themselves out of cut. But if any of these matches ended in a tie, if any of these ended in a tie or if Riley had beaten mark, then 34 match points would have gotten in and it would have made it much bigger. It would have been a pretty big top cut. It would have been.

And even like Henry and Evan tied there and if one of them had one, they would have been another X21 that could have been in cut. Oh, true. Yep, yep, yep. Actually we might have had more than 16 players in cut at. Actually it would have been close. Let's go to the sandings. No, no, it on the labs. Oh, it wouldn't show you. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh just scroll down 16. But then if the Henry matches and tie, that'd be 17. Yu-Gi-Oh Could have had our first ever top 16 cut. No, we've had one. We had where Drew Steffensen. Someone brought up my chat. Drew STEPHANSON Got or 17th.

Oh, I do not remember that. Yu-Gi-Oh At a European regional. I don't remember which one it was, but he got 17th. He was the. He was. Oh, he's the only victim of the Asim cap so far, I think in. Since we've had it. Well, Yu-Gi-Oh it was a clean top eight. And we can talk about the decks. There were three basic box. So again, basic box just doing really well and just two dragapult. So not quite the dominance we're used to seeing. We've got one. One slow king, one alakazam, and Josh actually was the first seed 12. Oh, and two going into cut. Did hit the auto loss in the Slow King. This matchup is really tough when Alakazam does not play Shaman.

Yu-Gi-Oh It's basically unwinnable. So he. His. His incredible run did get cut short. And then the big surprise, I think is the high drapple, which Ben Dobertstein just used to get second place. Yu-Gi-Oh definitely a deck that. Where do you want to start? Do you want to start with the Hydrapple? Do you want to start with the. Let's start with the winning list and start with Dylan's tournament running story. So it was a basic box one-of-one Dylan Katsuri, who. It's actually funny, I was not familiar at all with who Dylan was before this tournament, but it turns out after the fact, when I saw him tweet and saw like some other people quote, tweeting his old tweets and stuff. I had seen his YouTube videos come up recommended to me recently. What? He made a video and probably some of you at home have seen his YouTube videos recommended to you as well. He made a video about why is Andrew Hedrick so good? And he made a video about grinding to 2k Elo on the TCG live ladder and then he wins the tournament. So I call that a content creator dub right there.

You know, it doesn't. Very cool, for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh I'd seen the Hedrick video as well that popped up on. On my feeder on Twitter at some point. I don't remember where I saw it, but it's cool to see, you know, one of the ladder grinders once again on top. I mean, that's not what I think we want to see eventually. It's like if you can't get to 2K ELO on TCG Live. Can you even compete at tournaments anymore? Yu-Gi-Oh I was talking to Azul before we started recording. It's like, what is the. What's the Venn diagram look like of like 2k Elo and top 8 at Originals, right? Like, Yu-Gi-Oh How much overlap is there and like how few people who have gotten to 2k elo have not gotten top cut at a regionals as. Probably not many.

Yu-Gi-Oh probably not many. And probably like it's always hard to quantify how good someone is at the Pokemon tcg, but they're probably in, you know, in a skill level where they probably could top cut a regional as well, even. Even if they haven't quite yet. But a pretty unique list here. Azul, I mean, the big standouts. I mean, he plays Iron Crown and Iron Leaves, which are not crazy, but not everyone plays these cards. But he does play both of them. And then he also plays Enamorous and Heroes Cape.

Yu-Gi-Oh I was actually gonna say I don't think the list is that unique. We've seen all of these cards before. The Heroes cape is maybe the biggest thing that we haven't seen recently. I remember like one-of-one Rob popularizing it for a little bit though, last season. He was hyping up the Heroes cape in slot box, Raging Ball, whatever you want to call it in general. I think that is like the big question for like the slot box players right now is trying to get like the perfect. Like these are all like cards we've seen before. Like I mentioned that Amorous. We've seen it. The Iron Leaves, the Iron Crown heroescape as well. But like, figuring you don't have that much space in the deck to play all these tech cards like Tauros is another potential inclusion if you want to have an out to like the extra drill matchup. Plus it is like a more powerful crosstack than the Enamorous but Enamorus plus Heroes Cape probably is all you need for the Crustle matchup. But Yu-Gi-Oh trying to make that meta call on the. The correct tech Illusions at the right time I think is like the big. The big hurdle for the slot box players to overcome. And what I saw from Dylan's games, I mean, he utilized most of his cards pretty effectively. I mean, we didn't see him play against a Festival lead or Al Kazam on stream, so who knows how good the Iron Crown was. But besides the Iron Crown, everything was utilized to some degree.

He did talk about on Twitter he used the Iron Crown against A Alakazam at some point in the tournaments and then also a Crustle. Yu-Gi-Oh he lost the one, but beat one. Yu-Gi-Oh And did beat that Al Kazam as well. So looks like the iron crown pulled its weight. But Yu-Gi-Oh he started X12312 round six and then one-of-one every single game the rest of his event. He also beat both Hedrick and Liam on his path to the dub, which is pretty insane. Two like top five players in the game right now. I'd say so for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh So definitely an impressive, impressive run for sure. And then was in a unfavorable matchup in the finals as well. Up against Ben with the. The high grapple, but was able to pull it out if you need to get a little bit fortunate. But you have to play their outs. Play to his outs. Got the dub. It was very. It was a very cool and hype match for sure. Which is like no matter how it ended, it was very entertaining to watch.

Yep. For those who have not seen it yet, he did one-of-one effectively. It didn't like end the game immediately, but it basically did when he didn't have a way to one hit KO the Hydrapol Ex except for flipping three heads on Mega Kangaskhan and he went for it and he got it. Three heads. I mean it's. I tweeted about it. It's got to be one of the most like. I mean this is. It's like close to the Grant Manley top four. Whenever Landon Caitler squoveted into one into the Arceus V Star. Like it's, it's. It's almost that level of ridiculous thing happening on stream. Especially when you consider the stakes. Right. The fact that it's in the finals. $3000 flips effectively. Right. Winner gets 10k, loser gets 7k. World's invite on the line as well.

Yep. Yu-Gi-Oh Future stipend potential on the line. Right. Like so much riding on the flip and flip. Three coins. Any of them are tails. He loses the game on the spot, basically. On the spot. Ben just needed like 2 more energy in play or something like that. And he's koing that thing and winning the game. But he had to hit all three heads. He went for it and he got it. Yu-Gi-Oh Honestly, Kangaskhan has brought about some pretty hype moments. I think we saw the Rowan one. You and I casted that one.

Yu-Gi-Oh we were casting that one. And then there was Yoshiyuki. I don't know if it's in the finals or top four for Yoshiyuki, but he had A big Kangaskhan flip moment where he needed two or three heads as well. Yu-Gi-Oh Thank you. Thank you. As a caster. Thank you. Mega Kingascon. It definitely has created some very exciting moments for sure in the game so far. It honestly ended up being like, a pretty good card, actually. When Mega Kingston was first coming out, I didn't think that much of it, but it's done a. It's not a lot for the game, to be honest. It's keeping. Keeping some other decks alive besides Dragapult and maybe the most hype card of the. At least of the. I don't know, of the year.

We got like two more years of that thing too, don't we? Yu-Gi-Oh A lot more opportunity for. For clips farming. Kangaskhan is the clip farmer. It really is. It really is. I think. I still think the most impactful flip probably is the Andrew Hedrick and AIC Finals versus Stefan Confusion flip. That's gotta be number one. But this one's pretty close, honestly, because it's just. It has to be three heads. Yu-Gi-Oh And it was like, in the effective winning moment, like, he didn't one-of-one on that ko, but, like, it put Ben in such a bad spot that there was, like, no coming back. But.

Yu-Gi-Oh let's look at Pandora Apple deck. So again, a deck that we have not really seen much of since, like, the Indianapolis Regionals. I think it was, like, pretty popular. I played it there. It did okay, but not great. The deck was Zebra hype, like around that time period. Yu-Gi-Oh And it kind of like started to fall off from there, but it's always kind of stuck around. Top sixteens, top cut here and there. I think it's up at Melbourne, if I remember correctly. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that's right.

But this is probably. It's most. The most successful run from a hydrapple build, I think, so far. And there's really nothing Zebra crazy going on with the list. These are all cards we've seen in the deck. I think the only one maybe is Judge. That's like a little bit more unique. A lot of people do play like 14 or 15 energy and no night stretcher, but been here choosing to play 13 energy and two night stretcher. A little bit more flexibility, trading off for maybe a little bit less early game consistency. But 13 energy is still like a lot of energy, so I think it's probably worthwhile. Right?

Yu-Gi-Oh So the one thing I was gonna call out, Yu-Gi-Oh it's usually like one or zero night stretcher, but Yu-Gi-Oh Ben is here playing two and that's like the. As far as like a standout thing in the list goes. Like you said, it's pretty vanilla. Hydra Apple. That is probably the thing that stands out the most. But obviously not nothing too crazy. Pretty sure Apple build does play the bulu which is probably the other one. But that's. That's pretty normal. I'd say probably most play the bulu. But Yu-Gi-Oh contact for the crust gotta be ready.

It's also like a good. I saw this in actually Ben's. It came up big in Ben's top eight game where he was also up against slot box where it was a odd Prizm card that he had to force his opponent to go through because it can KO like all the ex's. So we kind of saw that come up in his. In the finals as well. He promoted it. Game one I think. Right. They both use their single Prizm guys in Game 1, which is probably generally a good strategy. It's worse though for Dylan because Mega Kangaskhan kind of negates the benefit you get from pushing a single prizer. But if you never attack with Mega King Son, you like force your opponent to boss. So it's like probably still worth it. Right? It was obviously I think his strategy because he went for it in two of the three games, I'm pretty sure. Right. Didn't he go for it in game three as well? No, he's celebrating or game two. He went forward in game two.

Yu-Gi-Oh Celebi got involved in the third game if I remember correctly. No, no, I mean Dylan. Dylan using the Enamorous. Sorry? Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Dylan did use the Enamorous twice. Yes. Yu-Gi-Oh But Yu-Gi-Oh congratulations event. I mean he's been on this deck for a while. We saw him kind of get on the map with it at Naic where the event where this deck had kind of fallen off. He lost the winning in to cut at Naic on stream and got top 32 at that tournament. Got his revenge, Got up into the finals and had a really good shot to one-of-one Had a good matchup. But Kangaskhan had other plans.

Yu-Gi-Oh the Kangasan was a little bit too much to overcome this time around, but still a good run nonetheless. The only high drapple up there and then I. I don't do want to take a look at the other two slot box list. I don't even know how different they were to be honest. You had Kelly. I don't know for sure. Kelly's might be the same as her worlds list. I think it's judge over Red card or no Judge over Lily. I think it's judge over Lily. Yu-Gi-Oh Cali chose to play the prime catcher. What I feel like has like become like the staple. A spec in slot box. That's usually like the go to currently, but also like a pretty standard list here. Nothing crazy did play the Ursaluna, which a lot of people don't play. So having like a more efficient way to close out games on pheasantipities and meowths or any other like 2 prizer that might be in the active. Yu-Gi-Oh You don't see the. The Ursuluna a ton. Yu-Gi-Oh I think it was just like one card different from her world.

Spill. Yu-Gi-Oh it looks like it is judge for Lily as the difference maker. Yu-Gi-Oh The Ursuline is an interesting one for sure. We don't really see it very much. I saw actually someone tweet recently. Like, I didn't. They tweeted a picture of it and we're like, I didn't even know this card was still legal because it was so good for so long, but nobody has played it since the rotation. Yu-Gi-Oh Basically it's falling completely off the map, which makes sense. It's just not as good as it once was. And you might be wondering, like, stopbox seems like a perfect deck to play it in. It's just like usually you don't need it to close out games. Like. Yu-Gi-Oh So it becomes kind of a dead card most of the time.

But it can be nice. Powerful. It can be a nice. Is just something to you needing less off of a late game. Like unfair stamp. Yu-Gi-Oh To like close out your game. Definitely. Also you can juice it up and attack with it early with the trumpet. Yu-Gi-Oh It's true. Hit with the trumpet. Yu-Gi-Oh So congrats to Kelly. A pretty sick couple of weeks run. And then Nicholas with the top eight finish. I actually saw someone, someone on Twitter. I tweeted one of Nicholas's games out and they said that Nicholas was actually getting married this coming weekend. So congratulations, Nicholas. Pretty. I mean, two pretty big things to Yu-Gi-Oh there. Right. What's more important impact on your life? Top eight at regionals, getting married. Pretty big moments for sure.

You got the. Maybe you got the dub. That would be like. That would be better than getting married. But. And this was actually isn't like too far off of like Dylan's list. Unfair stamp over Kate, but had the Enamorus, had the iron crown, had the iron leaves. That was like judge for red card. Yu-Gi-Oh It's basically like judge for red card, unfair stamp for Heroes cape and the energy counts are also the same. So very, very close overall. Yu-Gi-Oh Very, very similar. Then we did have Mark here or. Well, let's go. Let's do the dragon Pulse, I guess first.

All right, click it. All right, get out of here. It's hammer pole. Congrats to row hits. And then click on the other hammer. Paul, congrats to Liam on the top cut as well. It is just Hammer pulse. It's actually interesting because I. I asked Piper, who is casting this weekend backstage, how many more limitless entries she thought Andrew Hedrick's world's winning list was gonna get. And she said, I think his list from this weekend is probably going to have more entries than his world's list. And his world's list did have some. Right, six new entries, something like that. But if you look at his list from Baltimore, which is the same list that Liam played. Oh my gosh.

Yu-Gi-Oh That's a lot. It's a big chunk. This has got to be the most all time for like the day being tournament of a list. Yes. Yu-Gi-Oh probably. I didn't even know one-of-one was at this tournament. Yu-Gi-Oh I did not either. But here it is. And Mama Celia, Mama Celio down here making day two with it as well. Let's go. Now the question is like got a couple more. I mean, literally even this weekend, I wouldn't be surprised to see this list grow. We got two majors this weekend, Brisbane and Frankfurt. After that, receive. After that, Louisville. I mean. Yu-Gi-Oh I think there's gonna be. This list is gonna go crate grow quite a bit because I mean, how much more. How much is there to even change about the deck?

Yu-Gi-Oh So the changes changes from his world's list. It's minus red card for judge, minus dark for psychic. Which are all changes I think make sense. Especially the judge. The dark versus psychic. Maybe a little bit more questioning there, but he seemed to think it was worth it. Yu-Gi-Oh it's one of those situations where I would be curious where I was like, does he just think this is the better way to play the deck or is there some meta calling here? The judge might be because of Alakazam, like having a more aggressive way to interrupt Zam specifically instead of waiting. Because sometimes the Zam players like to wait and they don't want to draw their pr. They don't. They're comfortable not trying Prizm cards or. And also judge can be good mirror match as well. Like a way to be more like when you attack attack with judging them. So they can't just have like the full. You hope they don't have the full unfair stamp rose.

It lets you be aggressive with breaking the item lock. Yu-Gi-Oh exactly, exactly. So I'd be curious to know if he just thinks, like, like if he could go back and play Worlds, would he play this 60 or play his world 60, obviously. One world, but what does he think is like the better 60 even for that tournament? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh He said, saw that he was able to beat Alakazam Genesect in the finals without even needing to worry about red card. So he's like, man, get this red card out of here. Give the judge more aggressive disruption option.

Just roll with it. But then, Yu-Gi-Oh we got Mark here with the top four. Slow King build again, putting into Josh Frank's undefeated quote, unquote. I don't, I never like saying undefeated when someone's coming in with ties. It's like not really undefeated. It doesn't re. You're not 14 and oh, you're 1202. It's still great. Congratulations. You're not undefeated. Yu-Gi-Oh I actually like, Yu-Gi-Oh I always write like, even, like if someone was x and 1, I, I ra. I would rate x and 1 as more impressive than xo 2. If someone's like 13 and 1 compared to 1202, I think 13 and 1 is like more impressive. Yu-Gi-Oh It's looking here. And I had both Annihilates, which is something we've seen more match.

Right? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh More match points. Exactly. Okay. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I, I, I think you were like, saying that like it was like a hot take. No, no, no, no. Well, I mean, the way people talk about undefeated when someone has seven ties is like. Yu-Gi-Oh So maybe for some people it is a hot take. I don't know. Did you see the guy who went, oh, oh, at some point. Right. At some point he was like, I'm locking in on the bit. How many times can I get seven? And he was unable to get the 008 right or something.

Or was he able to accidentally lost, I think he said, or something like that. Unlucky. Yu-Gi-Oh Slow King build. Nothing new. We've seen all of these cards before, but we haven't Zenith, the Annihilates. That's not Zebra common. A lot of the world's lists played this split. Both Annihilates. Well, the one we saw on stream at least did maybe I shouldn't say a lot of the world's lists, See, I mean, the highest placing, it was like top 32. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh It was actually outside of top 32. Oh, it might have Been Justin.

I think he got like 29th. Oh, 31st. Just there. Just there. I think it was a drapion build if I'm not mistaken. Arnie's this episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen, snacks, a stapler. The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money shop, pay, manage your account and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started, see paypal.com protectionturnms.

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Oh, it was not drapel. Yu-Gi-Oh it's double lucky helmet. Yu-Gi-Oh No annihilates. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh The split of attackers was definitely interesting. In the list. Top cut of Baltimore. There's a way we could just see, like open up all the slow king lists. Oh, you just want to see what ones have this. Yu-Gi-Oh See a lot. Yu-Gi-Oh A lot of the Baltimores. Yu-Gi-Oh Reasonably popular. Not Zebra popular worlds though. Yu-Gi-Oh This is the guy we saw on stream, I think. Taiyi. Oh, it definitely has to just be the Alakazam hype because it is a good card against Alakazam. If they have Shaman, how good is it really? I don't know, it's fine. But I feel like that has to be the main reason for the increase in play.

Yu-Gi-Oh that is, I think the reason people play the card is so that you can have a chance, have a chance against a deck that plays Shaman. Yu-Gi-Oh And then we got Josh's XO2 Alakazam list. So the big things here, we already mentioned no Shaman, but does play the Twilight Masquerade. Alakazam. Yu-Gi-Oh I'd be curious to know like the exact reasons for wanting to include this card because in general, the card does feel pretty weak. I'll definitely be curious to know why. Why is this Alakazam in there? Do some cool things. But Yu-Gi-Oh is it strange hacking? Is it psychic for missed energy counter? Like what is it most often used for?

Not. No, I mean, like when I played it before I got like I remember the one time I put it in my deck I used it against Lucario when they had Rockies on them. But sure, this list. Oh this list doesn't have enhanced Hammer. So maybe it is a way to get around the Between Help Fan and Al Kazam. Maybe you can defeat Rocky Fighting Energy. I have no clue. There's like some cool stuff you can do with the card where you like under damage a high HP Pokemon and then is it maybe just a Crustle tech you just punch Crustle with it?

Oh sure. Like if they just you. You just let them like willy nilly load a million energy on their guy and then that would be. I mean they do do that. They do be doing that. The cross of players though, they want to get there. They want to get their Twitter clip where they. Or their Twitter pick where they have like 10 energy on their crust though. So they might just keep stacking it for the clout and then you just get them with the strange hacking Alakazam. Maybe were they worried about a little bit of like Rockets Mewtwo Rockets Kangaskhan.

Like it's just not beating either of those cards. I don't think maybe I beat the Rockets Kangasan. Actually it might beat the Rockets Gang is gone. Rockets Me too. I don't think it beats. It's not gonna be enough. I don't know if there's any other decks you wanted to take a look at. I mean we can call out the. Some of the top 16 top 32 decks like the Polaris. Shout out to Polaris First Year Master. By the way, I believe he also did just get top eight at the Open at Worlds as well where they. He one-of-one like the. Where they gave away the Prismatic like master set or whatever. But Yu-Gi-Oh Polaris and I believe one-of-one Dalgard Both making top 32 here with Lopunny Dusknor and also Ross Cawthon off to a hot start. Looking to get back 27th worlds invite or something.

28th, 39, 30th second all the world's invites. He's getting all the. He also played Blood Runner Saluna here. Honestly thinking like you're seeing Polaris already have starting to have that success here. It really is so sick that the Pokemon TCG has the younger divisions. Like it allows players to I don't know, enter the game more comfortably, you know around kids they're more. More their own age. But then also allows them to start to like I don't know, it's like it's like a Way to like foster talent in the game. It's like compared to like any other card game. No other card game has something like that where it's like you're showing up to the same competitions. Sure you're playing in a lower age division, but like you. It just like builds up the players to then go into the masters division and already be like Zebra successful. It really is just like such a cool thing that in the past I've been like, I've been kind of dismissive of the yard, the lower divisions, like, do we even need them? Does it really make a difference? But the more I've kind of like thought about it and like even witnessing it and thinking about it more of the last couple seasons, like, it really is such a cool thing that we have in the Pokemon TCG that like, compared to like other card games, like having that, you know, in our game. And Yu-Gi-Oh it is one of those things where it's like, hopefully the younger divisions. Like one thing that would be scary is if the younger divisions just never like start like not having enough attendance to like run local tournaments or major tournaments or something like that. So hopefully that like can be maintained. I think it like was one of the things that what Chris Brown brought up in his like his interview. Yu-Gi-Oh That we talked about last week because like it's very important to the game's growth.

Shout outs as well. Thomas Kowalski, little Blitzel here. All out. Blitzel's younger brother. Oh, little Blitzel. Where's. I don't see James Kowalski up here. I think we got a big blip club. The best Kowalski, the better Kowalski. Hold up, hold up. Playing the. The new Hedrick 60. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh It is literally just the 60, isn't it? Yep. Pretty good deck. And I mean there was tons of other like. I'm sure there's plenty of other first year masters up in this area too. I know Nathan did okay. He got top 64, I want to say. Yu-Gi-Oh 45th. Yu-Gi-Oh He lost his winning into top 32 to the Heroes cape. Basic box. He's like, I'm not beating that.

That is a big teal mask Ogrepon for sure. My opponent flipped over the active. It's another bad matchup. Picks up Zoroark that gets ready for the next round. But I think the other call outs here in top 32, there were the two Delmines, which we mentioned. Right. Nothing like really crazy in either of the lists. It's all like kind of. We've seen. Where's the other one? It's up there. Somewhere you definitely. That's right there. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh that's it. You got it. Oh, this one is a little interesting. The Blood Moon. Look, dude, what is this Blood Moon resurgence happening also? Like.

Well, no, that was. This one's just like the delmise. Like the other one's like the spread version. Blood Moon's a staple in this build with the deck. Okay. I'm just not. I'm not. I'm not. Sorry. Yu-Gi-Oh Like, Kabu Kabu played it when he got second at the. The Champions League. Oh, okay. Or Japan Championships. I don't know. Whatever. Whatever tournament. Japan Championships. Yu-Gi-Oh He was playing there saloon in there. Like, this was like pretty simple, actually. Might be Kabu's list. It's very close. It might be the same 60. Okay. Because he like, he played the Kieran. He played the air balloon, the flutter main. I can't actually. I don't. I can't actually tell what the difference is, but.

And then there was Lucario. There was festival lead. Biggest surprise, though, in the top 32 of the things we hadn't talked about yet. We got a Mega Star B up in here, dude. There's some stuff going on in this build, man. For sure. Salvatore petrol two two. Drake cloak. No to Dunspores. The. The one. The 333 split on the Pokemon search cards as well. You know what? Mix it up. Heroes Cape. There you go. Any other decks you want to talk about here? No, no. It's pretty standard stuff. There wasn't too many surprises from this tournament, to be honest. I think the results were like the bigger surprise. But even then, they weren't that shocking. Like, I don't think any of the decks in top cut are like bad decks. Obviously. They're all no Shock.

No crustle in top 32. Yu-Gi-Oh No zoark in top 32. Yu-Gi-Oh No excadrill in top 32. Lock your highest placing drill. He's cap. He did it, bro. The Kangaska combo also is playing Trolley and Brock scouting, which actually the. We're not going to talk too much about Champions League, but the Champions League winner was also playing Trolley and the Brock scouting was playing same 60 maybe. Probably not possible. There we go. Let's recap our predictions. Yu-Gi-Oh The first one actually is funny. We said what would the highest placing Alakazam variant be? Which was Josh. Frank, you pick the control build with Eldrim in minds and I Beckett the Lily's clefairy build and it's both. So I guess we both were right. Josh was like, what if we put it all in one deck.

And that's what he did and played no shaman. Well, there's very little recovery in this list. I didn't even realize. Just one nitrogen, one sacred ash. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh No Lanas and no Lana. Interesting. I guess maybe that is enough to beat most matchups. And then for like the Dragon Ball matches specifically, you have like Clefairy. Yu-Gi-Oh As like another attacker. And you can even use Clefairy against like even like slot box or something if they attack with a big enough bench with like a teal mask or something. Yu-Gi-Oh And then. Yu-Gi-Oh Our other prediction was pick a player to make top cut. I Beckett Andrew Hedrick. You Beckett Nathan Author, Oster Cats. Neither in cut.

Hedrick did get the top 32 though, so he had the better run overall. They both had respectable finishes though. Nathan Top 64, his first regionals as a master. Hedrick Top 32. Follow up to worlds is not bad at all. Yu-Gi-Oh definitely not too bad. Not too bad at all. But Yu-Gi-Oh that's gonna do it for Baltimore. Up next, talking about coin flips, obviously we talked about the finals and how it was one-of-one which was effectively came down to Kangaskhan, you know, and flipping three heads with Kangaskhan. And it did spark a little bit of discussion around coin flips in the Pokemon tcg.

Yu-Gi-Oh I saw a couple of sentiments here. This one, Jen, TCG says I hate to be the fun police, but tournaments literally being decided off the backs of coin flips isn't something I particularly enjoy seeing in card games. Not to say it all dynam. Dylan didn't deserve the one-of-one though. Congrats to him for the dub. Yu-Gi-Oh I think so. Everyone's entitled to their own opinions. And like also just want to say too, I did see other posts with the opposite take right. Of like, Yu-Gi-Oh dude, seeing tournaments. And like this makes it so much more entertaining. Right? So it's like people, people are kind of on both sides of the coin here. See what I did there? That's. That's the coin.

I mean people are obviously entitled on opinions. And it's like what I say to some people when they like they ask me about like deck choice. As I say, like, if you just don't like flipping coins, then just don't play it like that flips coins. Like if you just don't like it, it's not that big of a deal, right? Like if even if you think Paul Hammers is the best deck, if you just genuinely do not enjoy that expression of rng and that's like the big point. I think when people, if, if people can mentally overcome that. I think a lot of people would when they maybe were against the idea of coin flips. We'll understand it a little bit better. When you flip a coin in the Pokemon tcg, it is just an expression of the variance in the deck you're playing for, the situation in the game you're playing. But so is what you top deck or setting yourselves up to or setting yourself up to hopefully draw what you need. All feasandipity. It is all just an expression of variance. Flipping a coin just like front loads it, front loads it very heavily. But that what, that's what makes it more hype when it does happen and games are one-of-one or lost on coin flips because it is kind of, I don't know, it's like a more tangible. You could, it's like an easier to understand expression of the variants. But if someone like feasantipities into the perfect three cards, even if they thinned out their deck properly and set themselves up for it, they still got maybe even luckier than hitting three heads in a row on coin flips. It's just you can't calculate it. And it's a lot easier to calculate the coin flips of Kangaskhan. Right. But you could have gotten like luckier winning a different way. It's just expressed differently. And that's like the way you should like think about coin flips in the Pokemon tcg, it's just like variants being expressed in a way that's different than maximizing card draw potential. It is just flipping a coin. But like you have to set yourself up so that way if you do get the heads, it actually wins you the game. So it's all the same thing. Just like setting yourself up so you can fendipity into the perfect three cards and make it matter when you draw them. You have to set yourself up so when you get three heads on Kangaskhan, it wins you the game as well. So I think just a lot of like people who currently view coin flips negative, you should just change how you kind of think about it and view it. You realize it's not that bad.

Yu-Gi-Oh Honestly, like I don't know that I have too much to add. I mean, I think it's well said like the variance exists in all of the decks. It's just like a more upfront view whenever it's coin flips. And it does, it gets extra amplified when it's like literally winning the tournament moments as well, compared to like just happening. Is it like a game out in the field or a game at locals or whatever? Right. And so, you know. But I promise you, like, if the situation was slightly different, it would have felt maybe. I don't know, would it have felt equally bad if you're Ben and you like lose to them fezzing into the perfect three cards and like that hat. Does it feel equally as bad in that moment when you're sitting there at the final stage, they pheasant or like, I don't know, maybe if they end themselves into lycanroc GX to one-of-one the game, you know, like, does it feel pretty bad in that moment as well?

It's definitely one of those things where it's like it all. It probably all like. I think all those things reach a threshold where it feels equally bad. Like it's past the threshold and it just feels like maximum bad in the moment for sure. But like, I think one thing to say at the end of the day is like, if your opinion is you just don't like coin flips. I mean, that's also just like, that's just like, fine. But I think you should try and understand what is actually happening first. And then if you still don't like coin flips, sure. Sure. It's not the. The worst thing to dislike about the game, But I don't think it needs to go anywhere for sure. And I don't think that should ever be. The game designer's priority is to minimize coin flips in the game. Because once again, it is just rng loaded in a different, different way. And I do feel like if people had like, if Dylan had like fezed into the perfect three cards, People would recognize that he probably got pretty fortunate. But people would be like, the way he thinned out his deck throughout the whole game and the way he set himself up on the. On the last turn to maximize his odds to get those three cards. He played it so perfectly and it paid off this time. I guess that is a little lucky slight difference because, like, the Kangaskhan was like a desperation play, right? Like he had nothing better to do. He never wanted to go for Kangaskhan to try, try to one-of-one But it was like his only way to do it was that. Right.

You never want to have to fez into the perfect three cards either. But if that's all you got, just fez hope I get the perfect three. Right? So at the end of the day, it's. It's more similar than I think people recognize for sure. That is like the biggest thing at the end of the day. It's just variants being expressed in different ways. And coin flips aren't too bad. I mean this is another thing I've heard as well is like that it does feel like sometimes a coin flip gets slapped on a card is like a balancing thing in the game design department, you know?

Sure, right. Where it's like if Tangaskhan said It just did 250 and that's it, that'd be pretty good. Just kale phrase every time. But Yu-Gi-Oh the the variable for you to not be able to kill the pheasant deputy or maybe be able to kill a dragapult. It is like the bouncing factor of it. Right. Maybe be able to ko a power weighted garchomp. You know, like just go all the way. I think it's not taking them all down. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen, snacks, a stapler. The new PayPal app is like that but for your money shop pay manager account and earn rewards, rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com protectionturns.

This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, merch or tickets to the game. Plus it can be used anywhere. MasterCard is accepted no matter your team, no matter where you shop. Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com. Right there. All right, well, with that said, coin flips aren't that bad. If you do. If you still hate them, that's fine. Up next, we got guess that flavor text. We're three weeks in now.

Zero points each, but very on brand. Mine was. I had a pretty good first week. Let's see if even though I got zero points, like, I feel like that was still a good first week. I'm. I'm pretty hype about my first week still, to be honest. You know, I've just. Dude, you don't even refine my skills a little bit more. Like three or four people came up to me in this weekend. Where am I? Like, dude, how did you lose? It's a good question though. I feel like that's a good question that needs to be answered. But this week, chip is picking a card. Gonna read the flavor text on it, and then I have to try and guess which Pokemon that flavor text and card belong to. If I guess I write without using a single lifeline, I'll get four points. For each lifeline I use, I'll get one less point. The lifelines are what Set the card is from, what stage the card is, and then read an attack name. Chip it. I'm ready for this week's flavor text.

All right, here we go. Zero to zero like you said. This one. Here we go. If you see peculiar teeth marks on boulders or trees, it means that a blank is likely living nearby. I read it again. If you see peculiar teeth marks on boulders or trees, it means that a blank is likely living nearby. I mean, that could be, like, so many different Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh I definitely have to use some lifelines here. Let's go with what set the card is from. It is from shrouded fable. What set is that? Shredded fable.

Petronti x loyal 3 ex's. Yu-Gi-Oh The special set that came out right before Worlds in 24. Probably a basic, but it could be a stage one that evolves into a stage two. So at what stage it is a basic. All right, give me an attack name as well. I'm just gonna need to use them all Here. Sharp fang. It doesn't really help very much. All right, read it to me one more time. If you see peculiar teeth marks on boulders or trees, it means that a blank is likely living nearby. I don't know. There's so many. I think I'm just gonna go with rockruff. Let's just go with rockruff. I don't even know if there's a rocker from the set. I'm just gonna go.

Rockruff, lock it in. Yu-Gi-Oh Azulid is not a rock rough. It is, but of course. Okay. That makes sense. Yu-Gi-Oh it makes sense. I could see it for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh It's gonna be tough to get this one, no matter what I feel like. Look at how peculiar his teeth marks would be. Those are his tusks. Right. We've been over this before. I think we actually talked about, like, an actual or, like, a stage one. We've gone through the flavor tags. Yu-Gi-Oh You must have teeth besides those. Yu-Gi-Oh Thick tusks. Yu-Gi-Oh And then something about the. The hacksters Mentions the tusks as well, with its Prizm Yu-Gi-Oh So it has teeth besides the tusks. Yu-Gi-Oh It was gonna be tough to get. That's what. When I read this, which could Be so many Pokemon, like so many options here.

It was by design, buddy. Good, Good choice, Chip. You got me. Oh no. Ax you guess this week. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Got a couple major tournaments coming up this weekend and actually Brisbane is going to be streamed, which is really cool to see. Shout out to crew in Australia getting it done and bringing the streams to us despite, you know, the lack of like official streams. Hopefully we get to a point one day. I mean, I think we've talked about this. I think the Latin American region is like the next region for TPCI to tackle and probably fully stream all their events. And they're starting to build up to that now this season. Oceana is hopefully after that, if not alongside them at some point. But for now, grassroots style stream that we saw it at Melbourne. They did a great job there and they're doing it again this weekend. Coming up, the first stream will be Friday, like 7pm West coast time. I think the first day of the event will be. Or they actually have it listed right there. Oh no, no, it'll be 7pm Eastern Time. So it'll be 4pm West Coast west coast time.

So that's perfect for you. Yu-Gi-Oh I'll be, I'll be watch partying the the Brisbane Regional Championships, maybe into the Frankfurt Regional Championships. I'm gonna have to figure that out. Hopefully I can get a couple hours of sleep between day one of Brisbane and day one of Frankfurt because Frankfurt starts I assume pretty early for me. I actually don't know when the stream starts. But Yu-Gi-Oh shout out to the, to the community in Australia. Putting on the stream for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh let's go. Very excited to see all that happening. I mean more coverage of the game is great and it also just gives a chance for us to get to know and get to cheer for players a little bit more. Right. Like as a community, when you get to like, I mean obviously we know like the big like four or five players from Australia, but like so many players are just like so under the radar from.

Yu-Gi-Oh definitely the region. So very excited to get to see all that. But Yu-Gi-Oh let's talk about the metagame once again. 30th celebration is going to be legal. Does it matter, Azul? Are we gonna see anyone do anything cool? The two ex's are like kind of cool. I think MU Ex is obviously the big card, right. That has the highest chance to have an impact. What are you thinking? One thing I will say, I'm tired of seeing people say that Mu Ex is overhyped. Like MUX is just a Good card. I don't know where people are getting this over Hyper stuff from. Maybe it's because the. Oh, it's the only car people see people play with from the 30th celebration. But that's not people's fault. It's the only good card in this set. But it is a good card. And even if it doesn't see a ton of play coming up this weekend, it's got a bright future. Cards like Mew, you know, have long a long longevity potential in the future of the game. But how much is 30 celebration really change? I don't think very much like Mew and Slow King is cool. The Mew box decks that I've played with all suck. Maybe I just have bad lists, but every time I look at other people's lists, their lists look bad too. So I'm not. Yu-Gi-Oh the only thing I can think about is like Mew and Slow King, like that's the only thing I see right now.

I tried to build a Mew deck that just tried to copy Mega Kangaskhan as quick as possible. Just like wondrous patch, rapid fire combo. Just get in there with a 2 prizer versus a 3 prizer. Then my mu Ex gets knocked out and then it's like really hard to make the next one. But it's like if it was a Mega Kangaskhan, it wouldn't have gotten knocked out. So it wasn't very good. Yu-Gi-Oh Unfortunate. I also, dude, I wanted to try to make something happen with the Sylveon. I played around with it a little bit, just like kind of a lot to get rolling. I thought there was like real potential there. I'm not gonna lie.

Maybe the future. The future, you know, all the good cards for it exist right now though. I know Trumpet and Evo Ex, you never know what evolutions they'll come out with, right? There's. That's like. Maybe the biggest thing is that there's always more potential for new evolutions. But Yu-Gi-Oh 30 celebration, honestly, it's. I expected more from it, although I didn't expect a lot. But once like I started thinking like. So I just don't really think about the cards very much until they're literally out and I can start playing with them. But then once the set Tribute on live and I started like thinking about it and trying stuff, I was like, man, everything just kind of sucks. Like once I tried to actually start physically putting decks together or digitally putting decks together because I really just don't think about new sets until they Literally come out. I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh Muse, good. But does it really fit that well into anything right now? Maybe not. Besides Slow King and besides that. Yu-Gi-Oh there's not too much in the set, to be honest.

Have you tried it at all in Dragapult? I think that's one of the other places that people have tried it. I've seen it a little bit. It doesn't really make a ton of sense to me, to be honest. I have not. Maybe some Area 0 style build of Dragapult. It could work, but my hopes wouldn't be too high on that. I don't know. Maybe there's something there. I would want there to be something there. I just don't believe it that there is. There's so much psychic support right now as well that I feel like there's like potential for stuff. There's the. I mean, Mysterious Garden is still legal. We haven't seen that card played in forever. That's an insanely good stadium card. Right. Telepathic Energy is obviously one of the best energy cards in the game. But it's just like what you're copying. Just the options out there don't seem the best right now.

Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh not great. So that's probably not going to be a big change up. But there probably is going to be some things that change up maybe a little bit. Or it is one of those things. And we talk about this where it's like the metagame could be pretty similar to what we saw at Baltimore at Frankfurt because they just haven't had their tournament in this format yet. Like sometimes you just need to have. Each region needs to have its own tournament. But we saw Dragapult not be as dominant maybe, or feel. I would say feel as dominant, but it was like still a third of top 32.

Yu-Gi-Oh there's only two in top cut. And it didn't ever feel like Dragapult was gonna like be a huge percentage of top cut. Like during the tournament, it didn't ever feel like there was going to be five or six Dragapult and cut. Yu-Gi-Oh Maybe it would have been different if it was a top 16 cut. Right. Versus but if you look at the top 32, like as we'll said, Yu-Gi-Oh it is like a still a third of like the mo. Like I think that's like kind of the bar we're at now, like top 32 plus. That's like top level at the event. Right. You cash the tournament, you gave yourself a good shot. You had a really strong tournament run.

Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh definitely. I guess the question is like do we expect something similar this weekend? Brisbane Frankfurt, is there like do the Dragon Ball players adjust based on what we saw at this event? Well, I think we'll see the Hedrick list that got played at Baltimore get a lot more limitless entries. Yu-Gi-Oh I think so. But do we maybe see like more moltres in dragapult decks to compensate? Because I feel like that was a card that was missing that had been reasonably. I think like half of the Dragon Ball lists that made cut at Worlds were playing moltres. It seemed like there was very little moltres in the Dragon pulse at this tournament specifically.

Dude. Another deck we didn't even talk about by the way is Henry's Dusk nor dragapult deck. Yu-Gi-Oh not dragapult Dusk nor Dusk nor Dragapult. Very cool looking deck for sure. But I will say I think Henry tweeted out after the tournament I'll play a real deck next time or something like that. So I don't even know how confident he was in this. I believe Henry made this deck the day before the tournament. There we go. There we go. Yu-Gi-Oh Zebra Dust nor heavy. Only a 3, 3, 2 dragapult line. It really is all about curse blast as soon as possible right in this one.

Yu-Gi-Oh I mean I watched a couple of Henry's games. I saw one game against what even was was one of his day one rounds. Where he. I think it was this. He beat up on the drills though. Yu-Gi-Oh I think it was this slot box clefairy ogre pond deck where he one-of-one in two attacks. I just phantom diving two times with some cursed blasts things happening as well. So there's like a lot of potential, a lot of cool plays. It's a very flashy deck for sure. Very aggressive build. Maybe the most aggressive build. A pulse that exists or we've ever seen.

Yu-Gi-Oh I saw someone tweet that they tried to copy the list from a Bonds stream game. He got on stream with this deck and played it and one-of-one the big league cup. That happened Sunday at Baltimore. But they had 4, 4, 3 dragapult because like why wouldn't you play 4 4? Yu-Gi-Oh why not? Henry responded to the tweet and was like there are way too many Dragon Pokemon in this list. That is true. Actually the psychic Pokemon do out outweigh the Dragon Pokemon in the build which is pretty funny for sure.

But it is a Zebra cool deck. Yu-Gi-Oh Cool build, cool cook. Yu-Gi-Oh Like I said, it didn't seem like Henry was even that confident in the deck overall. So I don't know. I don't think we'll see anything like this moving forward. Yu-Gi-Oh I talked to a Bond about it for a second too, and he said like, Yu-Gi-Oh this is like a cool deck, but like, it's for sure just a one tournament deck. Like, if one of us does really well with the deck, like, it's just beaten by the inclusion of a psyduck. Like, Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know. People aren't really rocking the duck right now. I mean, Dustin.

Exactly. We're exiting worlds where Alakazam Dust Nor was one of the most interesting decks that happened at the world Championship. Someone's adding duck to their deck post worlds. Right. So even if you. Even if this one, I don't even know if people would be adding psyducks to their decks. Maybe, maybe. But. Yu-Gi-Oh I do think we will probably still see a similar trend. Like the people who have been playing Dragapult for like six months now, they're probably not going to change for any reason. Right. And nor should they, but I don't think that there's like, besides Henry's Pulp Hammers deck, I still feel like probably like 80 of the people who like, don't really want to play dragapult, but like, would play dragapult if they Goldin think of something better. I feel like a lot of them are gonna find something better to play. You know, something that seems more fun, more interesting.

Yu-Gi-Oh there is like a pretty big pool of the Dragon Ball players. They're just like, well, I can't find anything better, so I may as well play Pole. But they don't want to play Paul if they can find that. That better thing to play. For sure. Yu-Gi-Oh it's still gonna probably be. I mean, maybe it is going to settle around like that 30 mark, 5 to 6% increase. Like we see probably a pretty similar. But I could see it still being like more dominant at one of these turns tournaments. Maybe not both. Like, I could see like four of an eight top cut, like half of top cut being Dragon Pulse at Brisbane or Frankfurt.

Do you think people should play Moltres in Dragonfall builds? Because it also is good against like, it's good against High draft which has got second. Right. But it is also good against the basic box decks. Yu-Gi-Oh it's a pretty good argument for it. I feel like there's a pretty good argument for it. And then also, are more people gonna be on the heroes cape moving forward? Do we get a jamming tower involved? I mean, we know Hendrick said likes just running double risky ruins pretty much no matter what. Even when Watchtower seems good, even when jamming tower seems good. Stick with the receiver ruins but one ruins one jammy tower. Maybe deal with that heroes cape. That could be a possible switch up as well. But the thing was it'd be like do do all the stop box players just gonna switch to heroes cape off of what Dylan did like in this one one week turnaround at two tournaments that are in a different region. Like I feel like that's a lot for the meta to shift too quickly based on one major tournament results as well. So I want to be shocked to just see the dragon Ball players who are committed to maltrace still play and the ones who aren't not play it. There'll probably be an increase in maltrace but it probably one-of-one be extreme would be my guess. We did just come from worlds where slot box was what, 14 of the metagame or something? Was it 14 or 12?

It was like 10 day one. Oh 10. Yu-Gi-Oh So we did just come from there where it was like that popular and it didn't seem like moltres increase in play at all. Right. It takes a little time I think most of the mostly Yu-Gi-Oh So maybe like for Louisville is where we start to see the bigger turnaround in meta shift. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen, snacks, a stapler. The new PayPal app is like that but for your money shop pay, manage your account and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com protectionturns this message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, merch or tickets to the game. Plus it can be used anywhere. MasterCard is accepted no matter your team, no matter where you shop. Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com.

Is Slop on top Azul? I don't think so. I mean I think it's still obviously dragapult up there and I would even say like it's like solidly the second best deck. Like Alakazam's still very good. That hasn't gone anywhere. A lot of slop struggles against a lot of the lower percentage played decks as well. But it's not a bad choice. I think it's just another good deck in the mix. But I don't think it. It's like. Although, I mean, it was like. I guess if you look at the numbers like for Baltimore specifically, like it was only like what, 5% of the meta game and there was three in top cut and then there was two more in top 16, like right outside of it. So Yu-Gi-Oh it had a very successful weekend. It was. And if you don't consider Dragon ball to be the most dominant deck, then it probably was. Slot box was the most dominant deck on the weekend.

So which deck do you think is more consistent? Slot box or dragapults? That's about the same, probably. I don't think there's like two. Both decks play a lot of games. Both. Both decks. Dragon holds better at coming back from a slow start. But I don't think slot box is that bad at it because you can. You can do a lot with a little. With slot box. You know, Kangaskhan's always there to just swing if you have nothing else. So. But Yu-Gi-Oh I would say I think slot box is like in the mix. It'll have a bigger target on its back moving forward as well, which will make it. It not as good of a Blue Ice it probably was at Baltimore.

A deck we probably haven't talked about for the last few tournaments, but now we have to. Right. Second place, High drapple. I feel like high drapple probably one-of-one pop up and do Zebra well this weekend. We might see one do okay. Like it. Like you said, it's a deck that's still kind of been around, but it's just not. Not been as Hyper up. But I wouldn't be surprised if come the results of this weekend seeing not a lot of mole trays and dragapult decks come Louisville time. High drapple is actually reasonably popular.

Yu-Gi-Oh I could see that as well. I don't think it's this weekend though. Yu-Gi-Oh But I feel like Louisville is also the weekend where moltres would become more popular. True. So like, it would just kind of end up being like a not as good of a play. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't. I mean, Hydra pull. Once again, I still don't rate the deck that highly. I think it's a fine deck. There's so many decks that fit that category though, of like. Yep, it's fine deck. I think like I would still like rate Al Kazam higher than something like high travel. I Probably rate Alakazam higher than slot box as well. But Hydrapple, Alakazam, Slow King, I mean they're all in the mix in those like not Zebra low tiers, but like lower tiers of decks where they're still good decks. It's not a surprise to see them top cut but. But Yu-Gi-Oh I still just don't rate them that highly overall. I think they are just kind of. They're just like, Yu-Gi-Oh another. Another fine play. So that could show up at a tournament and if it did well again it wouldn't like be a shock. But I'm kind of with you. I would like predict no high drapples in top cut of either tournament if I had to make a prediction.

When will the people finally put Zork down as well? Another bad matchup. Another bad matchup. I don't know. I mean, I think that deck is fine still. I'm not as big of a hater on the deck. I think as you are or is not as down on the deck as you are. I think you feel like the deck is like pretty weak right now. And honestly the results from this tournament don't bode well for Zorark. Like if this trend continues of the slot boxes and the Hydrapples continuing to be strong plays, that is not a good thing for the Zorarks. And it does feel like the depth of options as Zorc has kind of like. It feels like Yu-Gi-Oh these like these builds right here where people are gravitating towards. It just feels like way less. I don't know, it just feels like way less powerful. If this is the best way to play Zoroark, the deck just doesn't feel like the tone build feels Zebra powerful, but it feels like things have, I don't know, fallen off.

Do you know what the joke is here? Nope. Vaughn. Is Vaughn Barnes. Just a funny name. Shout out to Von Barnes for getting 44th place. It is actually funny. The Tiest three finishing Zorg players were 43rd, 44th and 45th place. I guess one thing we could talk about which was kind of a unique thing we saw was Nathan Ostricatz's list with the ends purloin and we saw his game. We saw one feature match game from him and we saw him on stream and he used the inspir line in like all those games and I walked by his table multiple times during the event. I feel like every time I walked by this dude was using thieving Sepia against someone. So is the ends purloin a missing piece for this deck, maybe.

Maybe if more people played it, we would see like the higher results because obviously Nathan is only one player. But if everyone else Beckett up on the. And Spurloin and we thought be Zebra effective like you said, like against those like the Slow King, the Al Kazam matchup, stuff like that. Locking your opponent out of the game with its attack or we saw it on stream against. Was it a Bond, right? It was against a Bond. Yu-Gi-Oh A Bond did end up beating him though, right? A Bond did one-of-one I think.

No, Nathan one-of-one the set. Oh, didn't they? A Bond one-of-one game one. Nathan one-of-one the next two. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Yu-Gi-Oh we did see the Portland come up, although I don't know how much the Purloin being on the bench I think was more of a it. It was like not great as the game progressed, but it was like his only option in the early game situations. But it. Clocking up the bench a little bit was. Definitely seemed annoying as the games progress. But I don't know. I'm not. I mean, I don't know. Zorg still seems fine. It's hard for me to like say Zorg's bad because there's so much that that can do. Maybe we just haven't seen the best way to play the deck yet. And maybe it is just going back to the tomes. There are some very good European players who have been playing Zorark.

It's true. For a while. So honestly, where I'm at with Zork right now is like I just kind of want to see how Frankfurt plays out. And if those European players show up and they play Zork, then I wouldn't be surprised to see a couple sorts in top cut. You expect to see Tord roll up with the Zork? I was thinking more of Oyvind and Hermione. That's. That's. Those are. Those are the two. Yu-Gi-Oh We even did just get top eight at Worlds. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean toward. I feel like Torn maybe is ready to give up on Zork at this point. I don't know. We'll see. I also don't know if he's going to the event. I just kind of assume he is. But Yu-Gi-Oh I would say, Yu-Gi-Oh See how Frankfurt plays out for Zork.

We saw a couple of them in the top 32. Do you think the. Is the Megalopony Dusknor Bronzong deck deck finally real? Three of them in top 32 did nothing at Worlds basically after it got Zebra Hyper up. I mean I don't know. The deck seems kind of good. Like, it seems solid. Like it's another one of those decks where. Yu-Gi-Oh it seems. It feels like it's another deck that's just kind of in the mix. Another solid deck. Oh, I forgot to talk about in the beginning. I went to Elite Challenge last week.

What'd you play? I played Pult Norm. I just played Henry's worlds list. Basically, I changed one thing to get a second stadium in there. And I watched Henry's video on it, and he said that he was choosing blind second but didn't know for sure, like, if that was correct. But that's what he was doing at Worlds. And so that's what I did. I rolled up to the tournament, one-of-one the opening flip, chose to go second. My opponent starts me out the X. I'm like, okay, sick. They go poffin, Poffin for three dreepy and a bronzor.

Nice Pokepad. Pokepad for Dracloak. Bronzong. I have a dead hand. I get a second Dreepy out. I have two drippy. I pass, and they play lilies, and then they retreat and they evolution jammer, and I lose. Six turns later, it was epic. What you're saying is Henry Chow lost you your league challenge by telling you to pick second. If I had gone first, I'd have had two Drew Cloaks in play. I'd been. I'd have been chilling. There we go. There we go. Would have been cooking. It's actually funny. How could you do this to him?

That guy beat me and Grant at the league challenge and went 50 with his dragapult bronzong deck. And then Grant was like. Grant was texting me the next day. Was like, I'm really intrigued by this guy's brown song deck. One of them made it on stream. I don't know if it was that. I don't know if it was that guy or not, but there was not that deck on stream or on the side station. The side stream. And then I played against a crustle and absolutely threw my. Like, dude, I should have never lost. And I absolutely threw my game. And then I one-of-one my other three. So I went three and two challenge.

I think I got ninth, But I got four packs. It's okay. It's not bad. Not bad. But, Yu-Gi-Oh I think it's just another deck in the mix. Like, it's just, like. It just kind of seems fine, and it doesn't seem like a terrible play. I mean, I think, like. I mean, you see, like, the, like, you see players like Polaris and one-of-one choose to. To play it. I don't know if anyone else in their group played the deck as well. It seemed like they were working together, but they're the only two who are running it. They both make top 32. Like, I don't know. That's pretty solid consistent result there. X seems okay.

It is just the two of them on the 60. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know. We'll see if there's more to come of it. And when I played with the deck that I always kind of felt fine. I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh it seems fine. Bronze Song's good take over games. Oh, they only had one megalopony. I didn't realize that two. One megalopony can't Prizm it. Nope. Well, I mean you could just one-of-one with Dust Norris and Ursaluna. That is possible that you can just eat your opponent of fries cards to make that work. Yu-Gi-Oh this is definitely the type of deck as well where you're gonna one-of-one some games really fast. Like you're. You're gonna like wipe your opponent's board on the third turn of the game.

Yu-Gi-Oh I think maybe finally one of the bigger things to talk about from the results from Baltimore was the lack of Crustal and the amount of people who actually teched for Crustal. I. I saw so many people tweet out lists with Chi use. I was surprised. I mean I was saying to tech for crossover for the tournament, but I was also saying I thought Crustle was a pretty good place still. As a Crystal still seems pretty good. Yu-Gi-Oh Crystal seems pretty good still. Like I. I'm telling people, I'm telling that. Telling people that I think they should tech for it, but I don't think that many people are going to tech for it. Not that my influence influenced the amount of Chius at the event, but like, Yu-Gi-Oh a lot of people played Chi you or Tauros or other text for Crustal and Crystal had a pretty bad time at this tournament.

It felt like it definitely did not do great. There was never a time where it really felt like. Like at naic, there was a time where we actually thought top eight was going to be like five crystals. Yu-Gi-Oh Didn't end up happening like that. Honestly, if you rerolled in AIC again, like I feel like if you re rolled an AIC like 10 times, there's always probably like seven or eight of those results end up with four or five crystals in top eight. I'm not gonna lie about the more fortunate timeline. Yu-Gi-Oh it's Just that, I mean, dude, nobody likes to lose to Crustle, man. And it's like, it's. It's been enough tournaments now in AIC and where it's like, okay, I gotta respect this thing.

Yep. And that probably makes Crustle a pretty bad deck to play this coming weekend. Even though I have. There's always the like, debate, like, okay, who would play Crystal after seeing all of these texts? So like, Yu-Gi-Oh now I don't have to play the tech. Right. And then it's like, oh, the Crustle players think, oh, everyone's gonna see that Crystal was a bad play. Now I can play Crustle because they're gonna take out all their tech techs. I think what's gonna. I think what'll happen is it one-of-one be as tech 4. I feel like at Brisbane and Frankfurt, I feel like there was so many people taking for Crustle at this tournament. It was kind of insane. So my guess, it'll definitely be less teched for Crustle. Probably still one-of-one be a great play, but it'll be like, fine. I feel like at World and Naic specifically, like Crystal was like a pretty good play. So I think coming up this weekend, Crossle will probably be in an okay play, but maybe it will just be bad. Maybe there will be. Be a ton of text still. But Yu-Gi-Oh the amount of text that actually people ended up playing at Baltimore, I was surprised. I was really surprised. I didn't think we'd see that many texts for. Or Crustal. But Yu-Gi-Oh the. Yu-Gi-Oh Yep. There we go. There's a Tauros.

Yu-Gi-Oh I was looking. So Riley Cooper started 801, lost to Tauros one against. I assume a deck that has no answers. Lost two. It just pulled more. And Jamie two Jamming Tower though. Double Jamie is good there. Yep. I think honestly, you should. I think Pult Nord double jamming Tower is favored into Crustle. Could be him and Mark here. Slow King did lose to the Slow King. Yu-Gi-Oh it's looking just kind of is. Yu-Gi-Oh Favorite against Crossle. It is winnable for Cross alone. Yu-Gi-Oh I think they'll be. The amount of text was like way higher than I thought it would be. I think it'll be less, but it'll still probably not be a great Crustle tournament. So Crossle maybe needs to go on cool down until like Louisville and then that. Then the question gets posed at Louisville, should you tech for Crustal? Once again, a lot of guys from these crystal gamers we're losing to this.

I mean, Hendrick somehow beats Cross all the time. So Yu-Gi-Oh this is it. I don't know how, but he, he beat a crustle in this tournament too. He was not going to one-of-one game two, but he did one-of-one game one, which is all that mattered in round nine as the time was expiring. Yep. This cross was a man. Yu-Gi-Oh So, Yu-Gi-Oh I guess I would say it's probably not safe to play crossle this weekend. Right? Not safe. Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh I think those are all the major talking points going into this, this weekend of events. So we got to make some predictions, of course. So we're going to be doing these predictions combined. We're assuming that like we're predicting for both events at the same time. New set is legal for anyone who didn't pick up on that for the events this weekend, Frankfurt and Brisbane. But there's really only one relevant card. Hopefully we're wrong and someone comes out with like a broken Sylvia Johnny X deck or Pikachu deck or something. But I don't think it's gonna happen. MUE X is the only card that's going to be played probably. And our prediction across both tournaments is how many MUE X do we think will be in top cut effective 16 to like 24 players.

I'm gonna say. You ready for this? I'm ready. Zero. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh The only real deck that I see it being played in is Slow King. There is a lot of MUE X box decks that people are trying. I don' any of them are very good. I hope I'm wrong. I'm gonna say one because I think there'll be a slow kicking cut in one of the tournaments and they'll have a MU X. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight Donruss sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 90, 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now@palmolive.com this episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch Welch's fruit snacks. Made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's fruit snacks. Now. Made with no artificial dyes.

It is pretty good. And slow King for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh go ahead. You got the next one. Yu-Gi-Oh Next up. We talked about it plenty. Deck that's not really been on many people's radars. Just got second place, though. Was anyone gonna pick it up? What do you think the highest placing high grapple will be this weekend? I'm actually gonna predict neither. It one-of-one make cut in either tournament. I'm gonna go with a top 16. Someone might one-of-one up top six. Okay. But, I mean, they could make cut and still get top 16, so it would still count, right?

I guess, technically, Yu-Gi-Oh Extended prediction. None in top cut, but there will be one top 16. Okay. Okay. None in cut. Okay. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm not sure if we'll see a cut from a Hydra apple, honestly. I mean, I just don't think it's like, in a week. No one's gonna pick it up, really. Right. Ben has been playing this deck. Ben played it it at Naic. He also played it at Worlds. Did not make day two, but he went five and three. The next man around. It's not like a big new deck that we were like, oh, my gosh, this deck is good.

Yu-Gi-Oh No one's. No one's picking it up. So I'm gonna say probably, like, just. I mean, top. We'll say top 32. Okay. Top 32. All right. Next up. Up. Pick a player to make cut at both tournaments. So one player in Brisbane and one player in Frankfurt. Hey, I don't have any names off top of my head already. Do you have anything you want to start? Australia did pretty good at Worlds, to be honest. For how many invites they had? 2 in top eight, two more in top 32. Actually, you know what? Give me Nathan Spry. I was unfamiliar with the name until the World Championships, but my assumption would be Nathan will probably be at Brisbane. So I'm going Nathan Spry for top cut in Brisbane.

I'm gonna go a different route here, and I'm gonna choose Cato. Honestly, that is a way. That is a. That is a good choice. That is a good choice. I should have Beckett the Japanese player as well, to be honest. For the bit. Yu-Gi-Oh Is. Yu-Gi-Oh Kato Daichi Ryuki. Good. They probably will all be there. I mean, I think Cato is most likely to be there, though, for sure. I feel like he is. He'd be going. He'd be. Yu-Gi-Oh he'd be going. Yu-Gi-Oh And for My Frankfurt pick. I did talk. Just talk about him alongside Zorox. I'm gonna go with Hermione for Frankfurt Plains Orc Extended Prediction Planes Orc.

So you're not going to count him if he's not playing Zoarc? I guess not. No. Okay, I'll. I'll allow you to limit yourself for literally no reason. You know what? I'm gonna go pick another Japanese player. Maybe some of them will go to Europe. Yu-Gi-Oh that would be. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know if any Americans are going to. You know what I'm gonna pick. Yu-Gi-Oh surely there's some. I'm gonna pick mateus office top 8 worlds run. Yu-Gi-Oh don't know if he'll run it back with Alakazam Dusknoir Deck. I think he probably shouldn't, honestly. I think the deck is like, it was cool. I don't know like how strong it is just compared to other options. But as someone who I. I know he will not be afraid to do something cool. Innovate. Find something unique. So definitely Laskavitz Laskovitz. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm gonna do my best Mateus.

All right. All right. Solid picks. That's our picks. All right, you got any other thoughts before we get out to the bonus episode? One More Soldier. Send us out. Imagine. Oh dude, I did a Celebi check and it wasn't it. Oh, celeb check. Thanks so much to everyone for listening as always. If you did enjoy, be sure to leave us a like review Rating Comment Subscribe Let us know you're enjoying the podcast. It helps us out a bunch of it helps more people to discover what we are doing here on the channel. Appreciate the support and if you want to stay up to date with us, the best place to do it is over on X. You can follow myself at Chipper G Azul at Azul GG and you can follow the podcast at Uncommon Underscore Energy.

Yep. Appreciate the support as always and we'll catch you all next Wednesday, 7am at Edward Jones we believe Rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich Edward Jones member. SIPC Afternoon glare totally ruined my watch party for the big game. That's when my buddy recommended blinds.com with custom window treatments made to fit your style, space and budget. Customers who shop@blinds.com experienced overwhelming, overwhelming satisfaction. Side effects may include a Fleer deeper night's sleep and the sudden urge to host the watch party again. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Visit blinds.com to order your free samples today.