#296 A 20-Damage Attack that Won the Pokemon TCG Masters World Championships

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You this summer. Find more on Facebook. Hello and welcome to the Metapod podcast, the Pokemon podcast that revolves around the evolving meta and has moved into officially the 2026, 2027 Pokemon season. I am one of your hosts, Jake, as always with me, got Sean, my wonderful co host over across the pond. How are you doing? I'm good. I, I had a very relaxing weekend, Jake. I just, you know, hung out, played cards. What about you? What. What were you doing all weekend? I went 27. You could probably tell my voice. I went 27 hours of yapping. I, I not only watched the entirety of the world championships for the trading card games specifically, but I practice my commentary on them. Like I said, I would practice my commentary to try to update my demo reel with some Pokemon matches to be able to send a big Pikachu in order for Big Pikachu. Yu-Gi-Oh Big Pikachu in the suit and tie in order to get them to potentially let me cast especially the Vegas regional later this year in December. So I think I had some good games over in the demo reel, which was pretty nice. Saw a lot of really, really good games and we'll talk about more about the world championships. But if you did miss it, there's two different options of how you can patch auto Either you could go to my YouTube channel or Twitch channel. Not the Metapod specifically, but mine. I have the full VOD there. But if you only want to watch the matches, because that's the most important part, I will be uploading each individual match on the MetaPod YouTube channel. So you can get that there. I'm trying to. I probably one-of-one cut it up too much. It'll probably just be the beginning and the end and then that'll be most of the cuts and then uploaded there. Not gonna say that I was perfect in casting over the weekend. It was. Yu-Gi-Oh there. I mean, it was as good as you can do for doing, like, what, 15 rounds? 15, 15 best of threes, plus some of the side matches that got aired. And we can talk more about that later with the production. So, I mean, I would say that I. I actually probably did somewhere around like, 20, 20, some best of threes throughout the weekend, so. Got a lot of. Got a lot of stuff for the demo reel, but Worlds was. We can just transition right into Worlds. The world stream was so good, in my opinion. I had so much fun watching the World Championships. I thought there were great games. I thought they did a good job as well, giving a good variety. We can talk about the statistics a little bit of the World Championships with Dragapult was over 40 in Meta. Yu-Gi-Oh In phase one and then 30% in phase two. But we actually didn't see that much Dragapult, especially in the beginning on the broadcast. They did a great job showing unique decks, which I absolutely love. Yu-Gi-Oh Shout out to the broadcast team for, you know, correctly identifying that there would be plenty of opportunity for Dragapult in day two, Phase two, and in Top Cut. So let's show Slow King and Alak Kazam and Slot Box and every other. Huh? Which one? Yu-Gi-Oh they showed Zorark. They showed Zorark a couple times. They showed Excadrill. Yu-Gi-Oh They showed Ogre Pawn. I don't think they show. They showed Festival Lead. Yu-Gi-Oh Especially at the beginning. I think the first round was a Festival lead, like seeking. Yu-Gi-Oh Fernando. Fernando's former world champion in 2024 in Honolulu with Iron Thorns Ex playing Festival Lead. And I was thinking of you the entire time, Sean. I. I watched a little bit of the first round and, man, that Goldin last stand was just like, so good. It was like, let me just take a knockout with a fish and draw four cards. Yu-Gi-Oh If you don't know, Sea King, first Attack, Rapid Draw, draws two cards on the attack and then Festival Lead. The deck essentially lets your Pokemon attack twice in a single turn. So you're able essentially to do. To draw four cards. The max output that Fernando's build was able to do with damage modifiers and using stuff like Goldin was in total 340 damage. Crazy. The seeking. So 170 twice into 340. And then being able to draw four cards on top of that, especially because when you use Goldin it has to be the last card in your hand. The deck was awesome. And he got that combo off a surprising amount of times. So that was. That was a really cool first patch auto probably wasn't my best commentary, personally, because I was like, what the heck is going on? And I had some Internet troubles, like, before the first round, so I was a little scatterbrained. But, Yu-Gi-Oh that match was cool. Yu-Gi-Oh I wish I could have joined you in the booth. The times. The times just are really bad for you, I think. Yu-Gi-Oh Unless I join, like, the early rounds on phase one or two, which I was just. When. By the time you started, I was like, in the middle of things during the day, and then it transitions and then it's, like, late at night, and so. But, you know, you're tired. Yu-Gi-Oh I'll be. I'll be tired. Like, you know, you're not tired after that many hours of streaming. But I am tired, Jake, so it's time for my. I am tired. Do not worry. I rolled out of bed this morning and I was, like, cracking the neck. I was like, okay, we're in the home stretch, you know, but we got to do the Metapod. I love doing the Metapod. I always got to do it. But, I mean, like you said, we can jump right into it. I do want to mention one round that I watched that you were casting as well, which was the Sudden Death Game two. Oh, my God. Yu-Gi-Oh Craziness. So. So I highly Recommend the top 8 match between Henry Chow and Matthias Leshwick's. How do you say his last name? It's Polish, I think. I don't know. Come on, Sean, you're in Europe. Well, how do you not in Poland? I don't speak Polish. Give me a Dutch name. Anyways, Mateus, the Polish player that got top four last year at Worlds, forced a sudden death in game two of the best of three between Henry Chow's Dragonpool Dust, nor in his Alakazam Dust nor. Which we'll get into the builds later of some of the decks. But it one, it was the first time I think I've. I've really seen a sudden death that I can recall within the world championship. Top cut, but absolutely masterful play. Forcing the sudden death as his one-of-one condition to then go on and. Well, I one-of-one spoil how the sudden death went. Well, it was Zebra cool, though, because I've. I've been At a regional, I forced a sudden death as player, but it was in a game three I was playing. You remember the old Tina Tags deck? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh We have to knock out your mism. Yes. So I would knock out. You know, I did an attack where I was forced to, like, put damage onto my own bench. And so I chose to knock out my own Pokemon. I. I think I was playing against Tina Tags, actually. I can't. Yu-Gi-Oh I was playing against. Yu-Gi-Oh I was gonna say, how did you force the cuz. Didn't miss Magius draw cards on KO? Oh, no, no. It's different than that. I. I was playing against Tina Tags, and they had a. They had the. The equipment, the. The item attached that dealt four damage when you hit it. Oh, spell tag. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh And so. But I was playing Firebox, and so I could cheat, basically, and Blacephalon GX for one Prizm to one-of-one the game in sudden death. So. But having been a part of it, I've never seen, though, a sudden death in a game two of a best of three. I always think about it, like, as, like time is expiring. It's game three. You know, it's like the going into overtime. But, like, it's weird to have an overtime in the middle of your round. Like, oh, okay. Weird. It was so cool because. Because, like, when I was casting that game, like, I. I had the real cast on mute, right. So then people wouldn't hear, like, the double noise or something like that. And I remember that happening, and I was like, actually with Dusk, nor like, koing itself and koing another body. Like, I actually don't know if we go to sudden death or if somebody wins the game because they take the Prizm first or something. And I was like, I don't. I. It was hard to tell, like, right there. So not my. I highly recommend watching the game, but I become very frantic trying to figure out how the game went on. So don't. Don't take it too analytically in terms of the analysis. But, Yu-Gi-Oh the analysis. I. It was my. That was like my first time really trying to cast Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh So it was. It was definitely an experience because the game is so vastly different than any other game that I play and cast so well. We can get straight in now to the winner and then the best of the. The finals match, basically. But the winner, to probably no one's surprise, was. Honestly. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, Dragapult, I mean, obviously had such a great or such a high percentage over the weekend. I kind of expected a little more out of Dragapult. I know it one-of-one and it got three placements within top four, but hear me out. If you look at like the Overall, like top 32, there's not as much Dragapult as I thought there would be in there. So pretty good job. I feel, I mean, if, I mean, a lot of people actually have a problem with this meta and don't like this Meta, but I, I, I was surprised to not see Dragapult dominate as much, even though it did very well. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I will be the first to raise my hand and say that this is not particularly. Like, there's some really cool decks in the Meta, but the Meta itself is not my cup of tea. That is not to say that it is not a skillful meta. I mean, I think Dragapults is probably between Dragapult and Gardevoir. I think these are two of the most skill intensive decks that the Pokemon TCG has had in the last five years, is my guess. I know we literally saw in the World Championships, Dunsparce Ram one-of-one the game and one-of-one worlds. I mean, going into the. The winner, Andrew Hedrick, ended up winning against Diego Casiraga, former world champion in 2017. Hendrick getting his first world's one-of-one after winning five regionals and one NAIC within the last couple seasons. So I mean, anybody within the top four, right? Top four was Andrew Hedrick, Diego Casiraga, Brenton, Henry Chow. I would have been okay with any one of them winning. All Zebra deserving. Yu-Gi-Oh it crazy. Like Andrew Hedrick and Henry Chow have just been such huge proponents of the game since post Covid. Like playing on live and you know, doing these online tournaments, things like that, and just grinding so many games. Great young mind. Brent Tonneson, right. One of the top players in the world and travels to almost every single Pokemon event. You know, kind of the embodiment of like a pro player in the game, in my opinion. And then Diego Casiraga chasing for what could have been the second person ever to one-of-one multiple World Championship titles, having, like I said previously one-of-one in 2017. And Diego is one of two players all time to be in the top four or no top eight four times in their career at the World Championships for Masters. So I mean, just insane top four. This was one of the more stacked top eights that I can like, truly remember. It was such a good, it was such a good event. Yu-Gi-Oh like, there is, I think, honestly, every single person in the top eight, like, I'm not really familiar with, like Nathan Spry specifically, I'm sure Aussie's out there has been a. I think was top eight a previous year at Worlds. I think he's located before or maybe it was top 16 last year but I think thinking of. But I remember looking him up and finding. Okay, I was gonna say Nathan and Satoshi are the two players who I'm not as familiar with but that's you know, Satoshi fun fact. So Satoshi Matsui, who would have heard in the, in the broadcast before the world Championships he had never top 32 to major event. Yu-Gi-Oh Started he started playing the Pokemon trading card game at Prismatic Evolutions. That's crazy. Started started playing Prismatic Evolutions, traveled to a couple regionals, Never got top 32. Still qualified 128 in North America alongside his like Cups challenges, things like that. And top aided world championships. I think he was a part of the crew with like Rahul and stuff playing Crustle. Rahul did pretty well as also in the world championships. Got top 64, 38th overall. I mean Satoshi not making better than top 32 and qualifying for Worlds. That's like, that is a true like blue collar world's competitor right there. Just go into putting in the hours, it kind of goes to show like I think there's a really interesting conversation. You know, people talk about like how top 20 or top 128 North America for masters is like, oh, you have to travel to every single regional or play. But if you, I mean if you look at Satoshi's like limitless page, I mean, Yu-Gi-Oh he went to a couple regionals and he went to a fair amount, but I mean it's not like he, it's not like he placed overly highly. He got top 64 twice, you know, but got points at pretty much every single event he went to, whether he was top 256 or whatever the lowest threshold is, you know. Well that's even dating back last year to Naic. But like it goes to show like if you can travel to a couple events on like some weekends like and, and just do well in some of them, like a world's qualification is not actually like that far out of reach now. You do have to spend money traveling and you do have to take time off work maybe on like some Fridays to be able to do that travel. Like I totally get that. I'm not, I'm not going to say that that's not. It's not easy but. But no, it's not easy by any means, but I think it's a lot more reasonable than a Lot of people reacted to at least for North America Masters top 128 when they made that announcement of like, oh, I'll never qualify for the World Championships ever again. Like, well, it's, it's not unreasonable, I think especially if you. Because I think Satoshi is from Hawaii. Oh, interesting. That's not even in like the, the quote unquote mainland. Right. Like traveling from Hawaii to a lot of different regionals is way more expensive from. Than me in Las Vegas traveling to the same amount of events. Yu-Gi-Oh right. So I, I think he's from Hawaii. But anyways, fantastic in my opinion. Really, really cool. What was the other player you said? I mean, I said Nathan, those are the two that. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I don't immediately know. I think Rune maybe from Belgium. Rune is a new Masters player that was a very high level senior. That's probably why. Okay. Yu-Gi-Oh So when I'm getting absolutely destroyed at a local because Belgium is not that far from the Netherlands, when I get destroyed at a random local in the future by someone who is just barely like 18, I'll be like, Yu-Gi-Oh I see. Well, no, you have to be 16, I think. So there may be 17 soon. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh but I mean even the juniors, like you look at the juniors, the juniors are like when you get to the high level of any age bracket, like they'll wipe the Fleer on you. Like they'll, they'll. I don't care if you're 10 years old or you're 45 years old. Like if, if you're at the top of the level in the Pokemon trading card game in your age division, like I, I bet I lose 3 0, you know. So the winning list from Ed. Andrew Hedrick though, it is a dragapult list. But the question that you always have to ask is like, what flavor of dragapult are we talking about here? And it is a hammer pult. So it's playing that four copies of Crushing Hammer. I think this four copies of Crushing Hammer was originally sort of quote unquote popularized by Andrew Hedrick back at, I think Naic. Is that correct? Naic. This list is literally one card different from his Naic list. The difference within the list, if you're maybe like an audio listener and you don't actually see his deck list, it is plus one Buddoo, minus one ultra ball. And there you go. That's the list from. From Naics, basically. So pretty awesome in my opinion. I thought that this was a really good, I thought that this was a really good like set of ratios. And plays Risky ruin such a good stadium. I feel like not only for you, but to. To have like monkey dory manipulation, but to also set up knockouts with Phantom Dive. Lily's determination was just literally the card of the weekend. I feel like, especially for all these Dragon Ball players, like we saw so many times over the weekend, how many dragapult players either like, needed to top deck Lily's determination to be able to set up their board or use Meowth last ditch catch on the first turn, going second to be able to find Lily's determination. I think last ditch catch found Lily's determination 97% of the time in all the broadcast streams this weekend. Yu-Gi-Oh I think when Meowth first came out and it can be used like this, but I think initially people were just like, oh my gosh, people are just gonna meow to go get bossed for game. And you know, I. I do think that in many ways when Tapu Lele was in format, that's kind of how it was used. But. Well, it was used way better because you had double colorless. It was used a lot more than me. Meowth is. Although I did see a couple tuck tails this weekend. But to your point. Yes, But I think the other interesting thing about this matchup in particular, we can talk about Diego's deck too, is if you. So you know each other's lists at the top tables of these events now. Well, also at the. This was, I believe, the first world championship where if you made it within asymmetrical top cut, it was open decklists. Yep. So you were. You may have saw it if you watch like the broadcast, but sometimes you would see like the literal sheets of paper of the decklists of each player that the players were looking at before the match. And because of that, it was interesting that in either if you were in a Dragon pulp mirror or just in general, like if you're Diego playing Alakazam, you normally, if you're going second, I think most players don't just bench all the Pokemon that they might want from their hand before their turn starts. You know, usually you're like, oh, pick my starter, but then I'll wait till my turn to play my Pokemon down. Because Risky Ruins exists and because you don't want the damage counters on your own bodies, you were seeing all these players being like, I'm just gonna drop Badoo plus the Abra plus a Dunsparce, you know, like just throw them all down from the get go so that there's no possibility for your opponent to play Risky Ruins preemptively and you know if you don't have your own stadium bump, you're going to take some damage. I think it was Brent Tonneson facing Andrew Hedrick in Top four where that scenario happened because I made a joke, I remember during the stream, I was like, wait, did Brent bench a Pokemon in the pre start? Because if you like watch most high level play, like people just don't do that. But then thinking as you're saying about like Risky Ruins and that interaction, and especially in the Dragon Pole Mirror match where you don't want the damage counters in play on your side, it actually made a lot of sense when you're going second to actually bench that Pokemon in that pre stage where you're choosing an Active, which I, I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh that never even crossed my mind. And that's the difference between me and someone like Brent Tonneson, which was so cool. Me in third place at Worlds. Yu-Gi-Oh exactly. But again, when you know, Open Decklist and you know that your opponent is playing Dragapult with Risky Ruins, you know, that's, that's one of the things that like make the interactions within Top Cut so interesting. I think right now in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. So talking about the second place list in Diego, Diego was playing Alakazam. But as crazy as this sounds, there is now the open question of what flavor of Alakazam? Because. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh we'll get to that later. Yu-Gi-Oh we saw many versions, but this is, I think this is closer to what people expected. Alakazam. It's like closer to the list that I've been playing where it's like mostly Alakazam and then you're running a dedun sparse line, you have the dedenne in there for situational recursion. But what's cool about this list, and I really liked, you're playing a couple copies of Genesect with a few different tool cards like Air Balloon and, and the now infamous Lucky Hum. Which we'll get to. Yu-Gi-Oh but I, I do like the Genesect call in here because watching Diego play this, it was so apparent to me that he really prioritized getting the Genesect down on the right turn, making sure he's only playing it if he has a tool to attach so that it's not vulnerable, and knowing that once you do that your opponent, which a lot of Dragon pults are playing unfair stamp, all of a sudden your opponent can't just unfair stamp in response to you taking a knockout and you lose, theoretically. So I think a combination of that and a well timed airy. I mean, we saw this like an airy in one of the rounds. He played it after he had the Genesect out, got rid of a special red card and it's like, well, now the opponent has no way to reset their hand and the game is basically over. Yu-Gi-Oh especially because that well timed Arie got the red card as soon as he was going to get down to three prizes. And I think, I mean, especially watching Alakazam throughout the weekend, you know, because they featured it on match several times, including Diego. It was so interesting to see. And especially in the. The seniors finals. Right. Alakazam ended up winning the seniors finals against an Ogrepon. How? Like the only thing that really stopped Alakazam a lot of times, I mean, there were a couple different ways, but the main way that Alakazam was stopped was just one single disruption. Whether that was an unfair stamp or a special red card that happened. It was just one time. A lot of. In a lot of situations where that halted the Alakazam completely. So I. I totally agree with you on this emphasis on Genesect. I think it's a. Having multiple copies is really good because I think, you know, with Dragon Ball being so prevalent, you know, you want to nullify that unfair stamp. And I thought, you know, it was fantastic. The only thing is it you can't find your tool card. So we saw Diego in game three. In game three or game two. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Game two of the World Championships where he had so much draw and so many cards, but his three tool cards were in the bottom, like 12 cards of his deck. And he Goldin find a tool card to attach to Genesect for Ace Nullifier. So it put him just in a Zebra awkward situation. And I think that aggression of trying to fight it ultimately lost him the game in there. In that. Well, there was another thing that lost in the game, but for the most part, I think we can talk about it because I think you're correct. Right. Like people are going to focus on the one moment specifically that lost him the game without really thinking about, look, I don't know. Diego is a much better player than. Than myself especially. But there was a moment when he was drawing a lot of cards before he even got down to like five or six or whatever left in deck that I was even thinking, like he had the lucky helmet in hand. But the goal is to put air balloon on the Genesect instead. Yu-Gi-Oh And to make it your pivot Pokemon. Exactly. Make it a pivot. You can't trap it in the Active, all that. I get that. But he was very unlucky in that it took him till the last, like, 10, 11 cards to find any tool. And I think there was, like, a bit of a crossroads that he came across, which is like, I really. He spent a whole turn on game two, where he didn't attack because he didn't want to procure unfair stamp. Yu-Gi-Oh And, you know, if he'd found the tool and everything had gone his way, nobody would ever question this. But his desire to get a Genesect online, I think, was actually most of the turning point of game two. Because, like you said, specifically the Genesect with an air balloon. Yes, yes, specifically that. Because it just put him into a situation where he had so few cards left in deck and he still needed to take. What was it, like, four. Four prizes at that point? No, I think he needed to take two. No, no, no. Maybe it was. Maybe it was four. Actually, it was enough prizes where you're like, this is. You're cutting it close because you don't have. In this deck, you know, none of his Pokemon had been knocked out, so sacred Ash doesn't do anything. So in this deck, he's sitting there with no way to get Pokemon back into the deck currently. And you've really drawn yourself into, like, this tight corner. And Yu-Gi-Oh. I do want to give it a rundown because we're gonna. The thumbnail of this video is going to include it. What exactly happened that ended game two and gave Andrew Hedrick the. The one-of-one at the end? So I believe it was the turn where he specifically passed and did not attack with the Alakazam. He attached lucky helmet to the active to be able to draw an extra two cards and maybe find the air balloon, which without having to commit too many resources to attach onto Genesect. So he had actually found the air balloon. I watched it this morning, and I'm like, it's crash this morning. Yes. So he found the air balloon, he attached it, and he had a choice. He had a choice to either boss the drag cloak with the two energy on it, or to Ko the active Pokemon, which was Meowth, a two prizer. And I think. Well, remember, he chased prizes. No, no, he hit the drag cloak. Well, he hit a drag cloak earlier in the game, but he had a choice there because there was a drag cloak with two attached at the back. And I think because he'd drawn so many cards, he decided to take out the drag club. The drag club. No, he decided to take out the Meowth and The active, because he knew that he was on a. A clock in terms of the cards in his deck. And so he took the two prizes going down to three, knowing that, like, you know, you know, at this point, like, he can't get unfair stamped, all that good stuff. But he attached the lucky helmet to the active Alakazam and when he attacked, took the prizes, he only had four cards left in his deck. And so the going into there, right when you draw for or when you get attacked then by a dragon pulled or something of the sort, you draw two cards from lucky helmet, putting you at two, and then you draw one card right for turn, putting you at one. And then you can use De dun sparse runaway draw. Draw that one card, shuffle it back into the deck, and at that point, you're in a situation of like, oh, I can't necessarily deck out. But what Andrew Hedrick figured out is, wait, you don't play stuff like Ultra Ball that can discard Pokemon from your hand. And currently in your discard pile, you have no Pokemon. So what he did was he didn't evolve into Dragapult and used, I believe the attack is called Dragon Headbutt on the Dracloak to deal 70 damage, not knock out the Alakazam, but to proc the lucky helmet to draw the two. But at that point, because there's no Pokemon in the discard pile, Diego can't Sacred Ash. And he gets in a situation to where, yes, he can run away draw, he can put the two cards in the deck, you know, from the Dunsparce, and he would have those two cards. But then the next time that. The next time that Andrew would attack, the lucky helmet would proc. He would go to zero, and then he wouldn't be able to draw for turn and he would automatically lose by deck out. Yep. So that is ultimately what lost him the game. Now, there is a way, though. If he had attached a tool card, because I think he had one air balloon left, if he attached the air balloon and attached an energy onto the dedun sparse, he would be able at that point to put four cards in his deck to then nullify the proc of the lucky draw. But when you're at the table like that and you only have so many seconds to make an action, and Andrew Hedrick has found this weird, insane line that, like, gets you to deck out in this current situation. Like, he just didn't think of it at the time. I only say that because I had time to think about it afterwards and, like, discuss and, you know, with Chad and like, think about it overnight before we hopped on the podcast today. So, like, it was. It was an insane set. Even though it was 20 over on Andrew Hedrick side. I highly encourage that you go back and patch auto because it's some of the most phenomenal play. Yu-Gi-Oh That I feel like I seen because Andrew Hedrick also had a couple different turns like within that set where he. He could have gone like a. A risky ruins to knock off battle cage. He could have gone an unfair stamp or special red card or something and boss up active or boss something up ko whatever, do a crazy play. But then he chose to hold. Yu-Gi-Oh he didn't do any of those things. He just decided to not evolve anything, just wait another turn. And that also ultimately led him to like one-of-one one of those two games. And it's just. It's such fascinating play. You know, you talk about how maybe like everybody's playing Dragon Blue Ice so high easy. But like this was. This was an insane world championship set to watch. And I. I just again, I think everybody should patch auto Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, maybe with Chip and. Or maybe with Joe and was his commentary, maybe not mine, because I think they're probably a little bit more on the nose analytically of some things, but it was it. Yu-Gi-Oh you're right. It was fascinating. I think there have been a world's finals that have been decided by Deckout before there was that old, like, I don't know, Waylord or Seismic. There's been other decks. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, when Jason Kinski, I think in 2013. 20. 2013 or something like that, where he played Waylor, played against Waylord Stall. That's one that's tried to do it by deck out. So. So it's probably not the first world championship one-of-one by deckout, but it's certainly, as far as I can imagine, the first world championship one-of-one by inadvertent deckout by self Deckout and also by Dudunspar or by Dunsparce. Not the Dunsparce. No. Yu-Gi-Oh Dunsparce. Dunsparce coming in. Clutch for the dub. Yep. The. It was. It was neat. That was a. Was a cool match to watch. But the most dangerous threat is not Phantom Dive. It is Ram. Yu-Gi-Oh It is Your own unlucky helmet. Yu-Gi-Oh But it was. I mean, it was just absolutely crazy. Yu-Gi-Oh Absolutely loved it. I'll patch auto again sometime. But in terms of the other decks that sort of made the top. Brent Tonneson, another amazing run. I think he was first going into all of the top cut. Ended up he was the number one seed. Yu-Gi-Oh Ended up in third with another Hammer Pulse, I believe. And then Henry Chow became the thing that he swore to defeat. Henry Chow, if you don't know, is a former Drago, former Gardevoir, main Gardevoir stand before that rotated and now has joined the dark side and is playing Dragapult Dusknoir. To be fair, though, he's been playing Dragapult since April. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, just different iterations of it. He's played some Dragonfold Dunsparce. He's played straight Dragapult. But this, I think, being the first major that he's taken Dragon Ball Dusknoir. And what's really criminal about his Dusknor list is that he's not running Monkey Dories, which kind of feels wrong as somebody that played Gardevoir for so long. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. I guess he's cutting the monkey for the Pat Rat. Well, I mean, there's a couple Illusions So, like, in comparison to a lot of other lists, Pat Rat being there with that watchful Yu-Gi-Oh Right. Especially damage counters on each Pokemon can't be moved to other Pokemon just kind of wins that Monkey Dory battle. Right. Against a lot of other Dragon Pults. So if you're not running Monkey Dory, don't worry about it. But he's more trying to use Curse Blast on the Dust Norse, something that was popular in a couple different decks. I think I saw this in Ogre Pond list. I saw this in Dragapole list. Is the Moltres. Moltres from Phantasmal Flames being a one energy attacker. Fire Energy specifically. So it works well with Dragapult because you already have fire energies with the Fighting Wings attack. If your opponent's active Pokemon is indeed ex Pokemon, this attack does 90 more damage with the base of 20. So it does 110 in total. Knocks out a Teal Mask Ogre Pawn, I think is kind of the big idea behind that. Hitting 220 with the weakness. Yu-Gi-Oh And if you were to say, like, okay, what are the two, you know, Pokemon that probably represented the largest majority of all decks? I would probably say Dragapult and Teal Mask. That's not to say that the deck is a Teal Mask deck, but between Slot Box and Teal Mask, our Believa decks, I think Teal Mask was a very heavily utilized Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh And I mean, especially with the overall meta share, too. I believe, if my memory is correct, that Ogre Pond box, you know, with all the Ogre Ponds and Kangas, I call it Ex Pandora drop. Okay. Yu-Gi-Oh But that deck, whatever you want to call it, was, I think about 10 and a half percent of phase one in terms of the meta share, was the second most populous deck. And then in phase two, it was still the second most popular deck, but I think it was around like 7% or something of the sword. And then obviously you have people like Nathan Spry that piloted it to a top eight finish at World. So as you're saying, good representation for Teal Mask Ogre Pond. Yu-Gi-Oh But, Yu-Gi-Oh other than that, I do like the one of Judge in the list for this dragapult. A lot of dragon pults were running a one of Judge. Yu-Gi-Oh This weekend. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. If you do a lot of testing, you're like, okay, well, I'll have the stamp, but maybe people will play Genesect. So I'll have the special red card, but maybe I'll get Bedude in a pivotal turn. Or I'll get Aried or whatever. Or. I want to judge earlier. Yu-Gi-Oh you just want to judge even if one of your opponent weren't knocked out, or one of your characters or. I'm sorry, Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh Was not knocked out. So interestingly though, this one, only one stadium, one Jamming Tower, no risky ruins, which makes sense if you're not running monkey. But only one stadium, I think is a. You know, I don't think it really mattered, but it is. I probably a little liability in the Alakazam. If Alakazam is playing three or four copies of Battle Cage. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, we saw that when Henry Chow was playing Diego. I believe it was the top. Top four match. Yu-Gi-Oh top four match where Henry had a lot of opportunities, I think, to play Jamming Tower in order to bounce the Battle Cage. But it's kind of one of those things that maybe you would rather just have it as Ultra Ball fodder because, you know, with the card draw that Diego has been able to have that it's not going to last or have enough value one-of-one So you'd rather have it as an easy card to pitch in order to be able to use Ultra Ball to be able to find like an evolution of some sort. Yu-Gi-Oh Or you save it for one huge turn where you're going to take four prizes all at once. Yu-Gi-Oh that's. Yu-Gi-Oh But it's another decklist and I. I imagine a lot of drag aults right now are running that one of Rose's encouragement. So a card encouragement was really good. Yu-Gi-Oh It was a card that. Especially if you See a lot of Hammer Pult being played in a meta, you know your energy are going to get discarded. They're all basics and your main attacker is a stage two. It just feels like the right card to put in a deck. Especially when we have so much draw that you're like, okay, Yu-Gi-Oh And it's even one of those things too of like manually retreating. Right. Because you'll see a lot of times in Dragon Pool decks, even though. Even though they play like one or two Budus, you don't start at every single game. So a lot of times, because you are using Budew for your first attack of the game, to item lock your opponent, you have to attach and manually retreat. So there's one energy that can get in the discard that way. Ultra Ball can manipulate another energy in the discard or Crushing Hammers in the the Mirror match, as you were saying. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I thought. I really liked Rose's encouragement over this weekend. There were a lot of cool plays with Dragapult on Rose's encouragement. Now let's talk about Crustle real quick. I mean, the deck does, I think what it is designed to do primarily, which is wall your opponents out with Crustle and then if they have different kinds of attackers, instead you throw the Mega Kangaskhan up to do some attacking and. And then Missed Energy puts in a lot of work against Alakazam. So Yu-Gi-Oh I think the. The biggest thing about. About Crossle and its success is if people are respecting it. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that's one of those things. A lot of people just did not respect Crustle this weekend. I feel like they. There had to be a lot of abstract ways that just most players can't do to be able to get rid of the Crustle and Miss Energy. As you're talking about, you know, just a great card, especially when you talk about the Alakazam matchup. So just. Just the combination of those things piloted Crustle to a very, very high finish in this weekend. And if crustles were playing Ms. Energy, that's another thing too, because I think I remember hearing about one Crustle not playing Missed Energies and then. Crazy. Yu-Gi-Oh that's. That's tough. I. I also Want to shout A3 copies of Arie in this list. A little wild, but I mean it makes sense if you're like, just in case my opponent's playing Crushing Hammer Enhanced Hammers. Let me. Let me just get those out of there. Yu-Gi-Oh And it. I wonder. I don't know the answer, but I wonder if this is the highest placement Pokemon center lady has ever achieved. I think it's hard to tell because Pokemon center lady has been used over the years, especially when you talk about like Mewtwo Control. Yes. Mewtwo Piper Lepine did one-of-one the Toronto Regionals with Mewtwo Control back in Toronto, Ontario when it was Mewtwo v Union running around. So it's placed in that specifically at the World Championships. That's a whole different conversation. I don't know, there might be some like wall or control. It did one-of-one seniors in 2017 Worlds. Looking back at the Okari. Yu-Gi-Oh okay. Yes, yes, yes. Yu-Gi-Oh the cool thing about Limitless is you can like click on a card and you can see every single placement that it's ever got, like in a tournament. So you go way, way back. One EYC 2016 and Michael Pram Watts Yveltal Garbador one four Ray four one-of-one regionals. Yu-Gi-Oh With Jimmy Pendarvis. Rest In Peace. It one-of-one the World Championships in Shintaro Atomic Audino Build. Okay, so that's definitely the highest then. Are you winning a World Championship for Masters? Yu-Gi-Oh Okay. There's no beating that. Yu-Gi-Oh But still cool to see a funky little one of in Pokemon Center Lady. A card that almost always. You pull it and you're like, what is this, Bulk? You know what also is a funky card that I don't know why it's there. Festival grounds. It's to prevent status conditions. Festival grounds. Oh, you know what? I have always thought of festival grounds as just the thing that allows festival lead to attack multiple times. I've never actually read the card. Yu-Gi-Oh I've never legit read it. Okay, now I get it. Now I get it. Now I get it. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, it's weird. Like, no, like almost nobody ever uses it just for that effect. You're absolutely right. But Yu-Gi-Oh it has this weird little effect that like, oh, I guess in a control deck, in like a wall deck, you're like, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I guess that's pretty good. That's pretty good. I like the emphasis too of Team Rockets Petrol. Yes. Within the Crustle deck. You know, Team Rockets Petrol I feel like has had a big fall off in the format in terms of how many decks are using it. Just because we have things now like Lily's Determination Dawn. Right. Are great supporter cards in the game right now. But Team Rockets Petrol, just being able to find any trainer card for any situation that you want, you know, can find your ASPEC in Heroes Cape. Can find a stadium like Team Rockets Factory. That's in this deck or switch, you know, any specific one that you want, I think is a really cool emphasis on this deck. Even though I don't like Crustle. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I don't think I. Crustle is a very specific pick. Right. Like I. Yu-Gi-Oh you know, play what you want, but I think if you bring Crustle to locals, you're gonna get some side eyes, if I'm honest. But I've been there. I used to. I used to play a rangaroo pidgeotto and locals. So, like, I get it. But you know, for the most part though, it's just a style of play that is not usually very fun. But for your opponent. Yu-Gi-Oh for your opponent is about right. Let's briefly talk about this Alakazam Dusk Noir. Because this. This was my favorite list of the weekend. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh So we talk. This was my favorite list of the weekend. You talk about when you get to major events like the world Championships, you know, you. You hope there's a surprise. You hope that there is something crazy that somebody has cooked up and brewed for this. Mateus were or top four in the world Championships last year, going back to back top eights. Now in the last two years over at Worlds, piloted and created this Alakazam Dusknor list. Typically when you think of Alakazam, you think of either the control style that maybe Calvin Conner played or maybe what Diego was playing in the Dun Sparse and protection of the hand, you know, kind of deal going on. But this one is just wild. There's no battle cages in this desk. In this deck. There's no runaway draws. There is Curse Blast and also strange timepiece. Love strange timepiece. Yu-Gi-Oh this is definitely the. The. The highest placing card in this member with strange timepiece that you can devolve one of your evolved psychic type Pokemon by putting any number of evolution cards onto it into the hand. There were a couple situations where we saw Mateus in the championship evolve one Kadabra into Alakazam to draw three cards off the psychic draw ability. But then strange timepiece that Kadabra to put the Alakazam back into hand to then evolve a different Alakazam to then psychic draw one more time in order to draw three cards. I thought it was a really cool concept of like a list of unlikely pairings between the two. But also one of the things that I. There were a couple. There were two more things that I really, really liked. One, the AEC of choice. Right. Since you're not running Dun Sparse, the ASPEC was actually prime catcher in Mateus's list very solid to be able to chase Pokemon, especially when you can already chase them with Curse Blast, things of that nature. You can hit the. The Pokemon that is a big threat to you, especially because you're only running one boss in the list. But the other Pokemon that I really enjoyed in this list was Gwen. Gwen. A card that we've been high on since the Pitch Black released. We think this is a really cool card. Got its limelight at the World Championships in this deck, specifically discarding up to two Pokemon that don't have a rule box from your hand and drawing three for each Pokemon that you discard, drawing up to six. We saw a couple times that Mateus with all these Pokemon in the hand. I believe it was 24 in total Pokemon within this deck, 23 of them able to use because he was running a pheasant deputy. 23 Pokemon to use on Gwen. I think every single time he used Gwen, he drew six cards. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I don't think you probably have situations where you'll use it for three, but like, 99% of the time you're playing this for six. Like, that's. That's the point. And like you said, like, you're playing two night stretchers in the deck. You're playing copy of Sacred Ash so you can get Pokemon back that you might need, like after turn, you know, two or three. You probably don't need any more of those badoos. So easy fodder. Certain matchups, you're not going to need Shaman or Pat Rat easy. But like, maybe just discard the Dusknoir and say, I'll get it back later with a night stretcher. It's fine. One of the things that was really cool too, is like popping Dusk Norn Dusclops right with Curse Blast throughout the game, using Sacred Ash to shuffle the entire line back in, and then utilizing telepathic energy as your attachment for turn onto Alakazam or something and just putting the Duskulls right back onto the field. Right. The synergy is there with this deck because Dusk all is a psychic type. So having essentially four Buddy Buddy Poffins in the telepathic energy just brought the consistency of Alakazam as a whole very well throughout the weekend. But really was the big Kickstarter within this deck, specifically because you have two basic Pokemon that you love using the. The telepathic energy for. And weirdly, you know, two Alakazams in the top eight is really impressive, especially in a field of so many dragapults. You know, having Experienced the matchup myself quite a lot. It's not fun. But between Diego's build which runs all the battle stadiums, plus the Genesect, but this one, you might look at it and say, well, it doesn't run battle cage. Like this is completely different. Yu-Gi-Oh But the approach for Dragapult, like, I. I don't know, I haven't played this version, but I imagine you are playing badoo in the matchup so that they can't rare candy and then you're gonna try to just blow up all of their drag cloaks all at once between Prime Catcher and your own Dusknoirs. Right. Well, there was actually also really interesting play, I think both in the Swiss rounds. I believe it was day one that he was streamed against Piper Lepines and Zork. And I believe he also did this in his top eight match against Henry Chow. There were a lot of times where he would attack with Alakazam to purposely not knock anything out. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh To avoid getting into special red card range. To avoid allowing unfair stamp to be able to proc and reset his hand to then later finish off that Pokemon with Curse Blast Dust Nor or Dusclops. So it's actually like it was Zebra fascinating to watch. And again, that's another. Like especially the Swiss round against Piper Lepine because he. He honestly dominated that game in that best of three with Piper Lepine and Zorak. Like there was such fascinating play with Mateus and. And one of the reasons why I thought this list was Zebra interesting, because it's. It's different than every other Alakazam list in a lot of different facets, both as you actually play the deck, but also just how the deck functions in general with Dusknor and how the synergy is actually just so good. So it was. Oh God, it was. This world championships was so fun. Jake, do you want to transition now out of the competition and into the news? There was a few pieces of news, as there is always at Worlds. Can I say one more thing about Worlds, though? Well, I guess maybe it's a couple more things. One, shout out production. The stream was fantastic all weekend. Whether you were on the cast, whether you were behind the scenes, you know, in any sort of facet with the Streams or the Chase Center. Right. That was awesome. The. The Chase center was so cool and I wish I could have been there. But first of all, shout out to you for having what was one of the most fun world championships I think I've ever watched, you know, as a whole. But on top of that too Pokemon. I mentioned that I. That it was open decklist with an asymmetrical top cut. I believe the World Championships was the first major championship where the higher seed within top cut shows the first game turn order. Yu-Gi-Oh I think up to this point in every single championship, maybe they did it at NAIC and I just don't remember. But it was at least the first World Championships where the higher seed in top cut got to choose the turn order. So what we saw is actually like a lot less ties within the top cut to be able to secure spots within top cut. Right. You had players like Bren Tonneson, you know, playing out, you know, to try to become the higher seed of the bracket, to try to be the number one seed, and, you know, players trying to play for placements because in best of threes, if you do not know, there's actually an advantage from being able to choose in that first game, the turn order, if you don't have to roll a die for it, because it sets the tone for the series. It guarantees that if you have to go to a game three, you will get your advantageous position, you know, at the start of the game, which I think is something that has been common in a lot of other card games, you know, that Sean and I have been playing as of late, but something that Pokemon has now officially introduced. And I, I think for the competitive side of it is just a huge. Is a huge thing to speak on. And I think that's a very good for the health of the game in terms of the competitiveness. And I think also that, you know, we talk about how people didn't really like the meta. If you watch, like, Azul was doing, like, little short videos where he was talking to, like, players of how would you rate this format on a scale of 1 to 10? And most of them were between like 2 to 5 on a, with 10 being the best. So even though a lot of people didn't like it, as you're saying, there's a lot of skill expression within the game right now, and I think there was a high testament to how we saw what was one of the most stacked top cuts that I feel like I've seen in the World Championships in recent memory, and I think that's a testament to that skill ceiling. Yu-Gi-Oh Within the game. So. God, I've just. I could gush over it so much more, but we got to keep going. No, no, it's. It's. It's points well made, frankly. Yu-Gi-Oh but like we're saying, there's always news that Comes at the very end of world. Sometimes it's Zebra exciting and sometimes it's a little bit more mysterious. I think this year was the mysterious side of things. I thought it was okay. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh it was kind of. We can get there. But I want to talk. The first thing was a movie. The first Pokemon animated movie in the last seven years was announced. And this one is really interesting. It's called Pokemon Wild Card. It is a movie that follows a TCG player as the protagonist and it's animated. I'll. It's not following a real person. It's an animated film about a TCG player. But I mean, this looks kind of dope. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, we, if you do not remember, think this was 2023. Yu-Gi-Oh 2023. It pulled up on IMBD. There was a Pokemon TCG series path to the peak that aired that, you know, people really enjoyed. But this is a actual full movie and is also the first Pokemon animated movie overall in the last seven years. And if you look at who I assume is the protagonist, that will will be, or I guess the main character based around Mimikyu, probably his favorite Pokemon. Looks like he's running a Mimikyu deck in some of the, the screen grabs, even though none of his cards are sleeved in there. But the animation style was really cool. Very excited about it. Not sure the studio that could be behind this if this is like a studio Mapa or period or, you know, like any of those, or if it's going to be in house with Pokemon as the studio. But Pokemon Wild Card going to be coming in 2027. We don't know too much about it outside of the trailer, but I, I, I'm. This is probably what I'm most excited about from what they did reveal. Yu-Gi-Oh it's, Yu-Gi-Oh I'm, I'm Zebra excited. I think Jake will probably once it comes out in English. I think a movie review is. We got a movie review. Yu-Gi-Oh I think. Yu-Gi-Oh we'll definitely have a movie review. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I really want. It's not going to, it's going to come out in theaters, but man, I would have loved to have been able to do some sort of like a, we watch the movie and stream it together. Oh, like when so like Trixie, Mattel and Katya in their, like, YouTube series where they like partner with Netflix and then they watch, react. Do one of those things with Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh But I'm, I'm also excited to see if the players of the trading card game in this movie actually are good players or if the people writing the movie. Well, here's the thing is like, and here's my take on it. I think if you like put Andrew Hedrick in this movie, like a high level player like Andrew Hedrick, this movie would be difficult and probably wouldn't do well. You have to in my opinion, make the movie because you're adhering to the at most casual player, maybe even collectors that don't even play the game to get them introduced into playing the game. You have to put the game at its basic form. And so that's why you see like in the screen grab, if you look at the Poke beach article, like he is running a Mimikyu with two psychic energies on it. No bench Pokemon. All the cards are unsleeved on the field. Judge, judge. My opponent doesn't have any sleeves. It is probably not going to be the most, the most highest level play that you'll ever see in the Pokemon trading card game within this movie. But what I'm hoping is that the storyline, the animation, the plot and things like that is really what drives the movie. Yu-Gi-Oh this is going to be a league battle deck level one type of approach for gameplay. It might be lower than that. Yu-Gi-Oh it might be my first battle. What I am curious about though is if it's going to feature like cards that we know. Like is this going to feature like a boss's orders or is this going to feature like a ultra Ball, you know, or. Or something of feas and dipity. You know, when it gets closer we'll have to put a pull out. And I wonder what the like licensing is. Like, can you, can you use the pheasantipity regular art? Yu-Gi-Oh Artwork and just like animate it in the, in the. I don't know. Like I. There's a lot of questions revolving around this movie. And again it's coming out in 2027 so I'll probably forget about it until like another trailer drops next year. Jake or whatever. I'm Gonna throw out one prediction. 2027, late 2027 or early 2028 Pokemon wild card TCG set incoming in Beckett maybe. Honestly, this is paper. The game is played in paper. There's got to be a paper TCG set because there was a Detective Pikachu set there. You know what? Actually you're probably not that far off the mark. Yu-Gi-Oh there's probably going to be a holiday set that has wild Card. Actually. You know what? You're so right. Because even the path to the peak there was that promo. Oddish. Yep. That was out. So Actually, Yu-Gi-Oh it might just be a promo Mimikyu or something because I assume that his favorite Pokemon is going to be Mimikyu and his deck's gonna be built all around Mimikyu. But also, kid's not holding a deck box in one of the pictures. He's just holding his deck in his hand. Can we also talk about how Andrew Hedrick walked on the stage with a Walmart tin holding his deck? Can we talk about that real quick? Anyways, we. Yu-Gi-Oh we one-of-one talk about that anymore, but. And Diego having the deck box I'm pretty sure in his Beckett he just pulls it out. Can we just talk about the insanity of those walkouts and how it was so funny. So that was probably the most exciting news of the reveal, which tells you a lot about what else they revealed. We got a couple new cards. Revealed we had Mega Lucario Z. So the first Z Megas are coming and I have the Mega Lucario Z pulled up on screen. But for those of you who haven't seen it, 330 HP metal type Pokemon. It has an ability aura Seeker. Once during your turn, if this Pokemon is in the active spot, you may use the ability. Search your deck for a supporter, put it into your hand and then shuffle tight. Read the attack before. The attack is Boot Booty Cheeks. The attack's terrible for two. Metal dancing fist. 120 plus. If your opponent's active as an ex, it does 120 more. 240 for two. It's 20, 22 all over again. This card sucks for a three prizer. Yu-Gi-Oh that's real bad. That's real bad. I don't think this card is good. Maybe there's going to be some crazy metal supporter that you're going to want to be able to just find. I mean, hey, Lucario, you know the Lucario Bronzong deck? Do you remember that? The tag team. Yu-Gi-Oh Look, maybe there's another metal supporter on the way that says your mega Lucario takes 70 less damage or deals more damage or. And that's all the supporter does. Look, if you can search for it every turn and you can guarantee yourself not getting knocked out, it's not terrible. You have to. I mean, I don't. You have to use Metal Maker as your engine more than likely, right, to be able to get the attachments on. Because you have no way to get double attachments on Metal Energy as of right now. Outside of that. Well, you can use the tool that gets it from your discard back onto it at the end of turn. Yes. Hourglass Yu-Gi-Oh In Zorark. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean you could, but Jamming Tower. Look. Some people were running tool scrapper this weekend. So Yu-Gi-Oh official fans in the Metapod. But we have that. And then we got a Sigilif ex. This one's 210hp psychic mega protection is the ability prevent all damage done to this Pokemon by attacks from your opponent's Mega Evolution. Exactly. Art still loses your Dragapult. This is. I mean it's psychic type. So you can hit Dragapult for not enough. This is a damage to knock it out. Yu-Gi-Oh Your attack power cyclone for 140. Damage for triple colorless. By the way, criminal three colorless energy and only doing 140 is. Is so bad. Yu-Gi-Oh Moving energy from this Pokemon to one of your bench Pokemon. This will be better when things like. Things like Dragon Pole rotate. Right. Because Obviously as a 210 HP Pokemon, this card will get eaten up by Dragapult for many different reasons. But if we get to a point where it's really just a lot of Megas that are running around, you know, there's a lot of Mega Kangaskhans. There's Excadrills running around. You know, maybe the Lucarios. I know Graham Manley made day with Mega Lucario this past weekend and then after day two made a meme about, you know, how to. How to play one piece or whatever. Like Googling how to play one piece because he was crashing out after this Pokemon season being so bad. Or this format anyways. Yu-Gi-Oh this. This Sigilif is something that probably will not be Zebra usable until the. The next rotation. Yu-Gi-Oh I. That. That checks out. But these cards as well are being revealed from November's Aura Seeker. That hasn't been officially revealed yet. The English cards have been teased revealing the set symbol name Flo Aura Seeker. I. Yu-Gi-Oh Is releasing in Japan late November. November 27th. And I think this is. Is this the high class set? I believe so. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh But it's basically gonna be. Oh actually no. November is Aura Seeker New Mega Attack Rares. What is presumably February's Mega Mega Parade. The latter. It's the wording on this is a little funky. I can't really tell what's what. Yu-Gi-Oh But our set for November, our English set is already. I think. Is it already most. It's Delta Delta Rain. Yu-Gi-Oh It's the Requesa set. Yu-Gi-Oh exactly. So we one-of-one be getting these cards until next year at a minimum. Yes. So Correct. But what is also revealed in the Mega Mega Parade in that high Class set is new alternate arts. The Attack, the Mega Attack Rares of Darkrai, Rayquaza, Greninja and the Zygarde. I forgot what his name was for a second. I mean the Greninja and the. I mean the Rayquaza one is going to be the one that everybody wants, right? If you're playing it pretty cool, Rayquaza does look like it's probably going to be a pretty good deck. It seems to be doing all right in Japan, so. So Yu-Gi-Oh Does it beat Dragapult though, is the real question. I mean, I'm not sure. I haven't seen the results from Japan, but people are playing it, so I might. Yu-Gi-Oh people are. It's probably going to be a meta relevant deck that you could expect to see like at a regional or something like that. But Yu-Gi-Oh some. Some reveals that happened. And then there was also a upcoming series that was teased. So there was a little teaser video that featured Suicune Entei and Raiku. Right, the legendary beasts, specifically not dogs, beasts. I will fight to the end on that. But anyways, it also show showed a EX symbol. The EX symbol that we have seen for the last couple of years now with a star next to it. And that is all we know. The three legendary beasts and a new symbol. What it is presumed is that this new symbol will potentially end the Mega Evolution block. But giving us a new block start in the spring of this Pokemon EX Star. And this in my opinion was very underwhelming. I. I think that they should have a I I Ex Star cannot be the name of the series because like that is an insane thing for people to try to type in in Google search. Like, oh, right now you're doing Mega Evolution colon blank, right? And it's like fine, you know, and maybe you can shorthand it with just the set name like Delta Rain or Pitch Black kind of works. But EX Star colon, you can't type that in. It's a symbol. Like. So this is where I'm like, it might be colloquially an Ex Star series, but they're gonna have. They cannot be. This, this cannot be the set name. That's crazy. I think, I think also there's a lot of theories around what this is going to be. I think this is going to especially because ASPECs are leaving the format, right? We've had these blocks that are radiant. One per deck aspects. One per deck. So would make sense to me if this was like a kind of like a new radiant version of an EX where you can only have One in the deck to be able to utilize. But it's a Zebra powerful, you know, thing like Radiant Greninja was or like, secret box, you know, and stuff is. It could also be. I think I looked up the gold stars because if you look at the way that the symbol is sort of designed graphically, it's not that different from the way that they sort of mash together. Charizard Gold Star, Pikachu Gold Star. So it is EX Star. It's just not a gold star. And I believe with the Gold Star cards, you could only have one of that card in your deck, not one gold star in your deck. I believe that you're right on that. I did make a yu-gi-oh sending to you. I posted online after they revealed the ex. I said, Pokemon will be reprinting Dragapult EX and a Gold Star version to give it three more years in the rotation. But now you can only have one dragon. It's fine. Yu-Gi-Oh but. Yu-Gi-Oh like, I. I personally think that, you know, this is all prediction, and who knows, But I think we'll probably be closer to something like the Gold Star Mechanic and Prizm Stars, which you could have multiple of that type in your deck, but you could only have one of each individual card name. I think that would be interesting because then you could theoretically also run the deck like Entei, Suicune, and Raikou all together. Right. You could run all three Legendary Beasts in the same deck, which, like, you know, I don't know if it's good or bad, but thematically it's interesting. Right. And you could see them doing the same thing in the future for the Legendary Birds, where you have, like, the three colors and I don't know. Point being, I think that's. My guess is it's a one of each card name. And if I were Pokemon and doing that, I might consider bringing back the Prizm Star mechanic of when they go get knocked out, the Pokemon, they go to the Lost Zone. Yu-Gi-Oh I could see that, because that was a problem with Charizard. Radiant Charizard is. There was a whole deck built around it. It was a card that was never meant to be the main attacker for a deck, but there was a whole deck that worked, and it just. You just recurred it every time. So, I mean, Radiant Greninja can be the same thing and Lost Box, right. With Moonlight Shirk and just being that good of an attack and ability to draw extra cards. So I think it could be interesting. But I was. I guess I was slightly, like, disappointed by this year's set of news because like in years past, you know, when they like revealed tag teams, we knew that we were getting tag teams. You know, when we got vmaxes, I think we already had these at that point. No, we got, we. They, they introduced it as V cards and there was a big joke. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh V card and virginity. You know, I was like, oh, funny Pokemon. But it overall I just was like, I wish we could have gotten like a little more substance. Like maybe like show a little bit of the card. You don't have to talk about how many prizes are. It is. Or the mechanic or any attacks or any abilities. Just give me a little something. Give me a little something. Yu-Gi-Oh And they didn't, they didn't really give much. And also I'm kind of like over ex's right now. Like I, I've seen exs. We've rotated out some ex's. We're seeing megas. You know, I've, I just, I want to move away from EXs or start transitioning away. I mean, V Stars and Ex. I guess V Stars are a little different because you evolved a 2 prizer into a 2 prizer. V stars also had like the V Star power, which maybe, maybe this will be included in the EX Star is like you have your EX Star attack or your EX Star blank. Maybe they're bringing back. I would actually be ticked if it was an EX Star attack. Yu-Gi-Oh Because I don't, I don't know. I just feel like we're, we're not far enough removed from like these stars. That's where that. But I think V Star folks were probably like we're not far enough removed from GX attacks. Yu-Gi-Oh that is true. Because it. But GXs were. GX attacks were never an ability, whereas Starbirth was a broken. Yu-Gi-Oh they made it an ability, which is a little crazy. Yu-Gi-Oh But also I think there's a going along this topic of like the, the, the teaser to like introduce the new gimmick of the year. I, I don't know if you've watched Azul and Tricky Jim's video. Oh, they're like pre or world thing, right? Yu-Gi-Oh Where they answered a bunch of questions. I thought it was really interesting to hear from Andrew because they, they had a question of like what do you hope the gimmick is going to be? And Andrew kind of talked about like how he really just hoped it was something new that's never been done before because like you go back to exs. Right. For example, for probably a Majority of the player base, they've never played in a format with Exs because maybe they joined during tag teams, maybe they joined during, you know, Scarlet, Violet, Block or something of the sort of. They've never seen, you know, the XY era of EX's. So this feels new to them. And Pokemon always like recycle different effects. You know, how many times have we talked about Hide and Sneak being like, stack the Pokemon in the discard pile and the more Pokemon you have, the more damage you do or whatever, you unlock certain effects. You know, Mew. Mew is a prime example. Mew and Mewtwo, you know, copying attacks somewhere in the, in the board state or whatever. So it's like he talked about how like, for the veteran players, you know, that have seen the iterations done like a couple times now, it's just like you kind of just hope that it's something new like that they've never done before. That's never, you know, that's not replicated and, and pasted over with the new stamp. And even though, like you and I have not been playing for, I would say like that long, comparatively to a lot of other people, I, as someone who has watched and played in a lot of old formats and you know, has consumed a lot of content within the old formats of like championship years and, and stuff like that, I. I feel like I'm also in the sentiment that I hope it's just new. I hope it's just a new flavor, although I think that might not be the easiest thing to do for a majority of the player base. So I just thought it was a really interesting like, conversation that they briefly had. I mean, I do agree. I think that the last time that I can think of the Pokemon company doing something quote unquote, new, I think the GX attack when it came out was truly new. Yu-Gi-Oh right. Like that was truly new. And then before that, I think break cards in many ways were pretty new, like a concept. Even the tag teams, right, the tag teams being three Prizm Pokemon, it was new and eventually it turned into something people didn't really like as much at the time. But in retrospect, there's a handful of people if you talk to that have gone back to the format. They're like, oh, actually it wasn't that bad. I mean, some, I think some tag teams are actually quite fun to play, even if they're really strong. But like ADP I don't think is one of them. But ADP Pre Zacian was fine. Sure. ADP Pre Yu-Gi-Oh but Pico Rom Zebra fun, you know, like that is a tag team that I think is like really sits at the core of what the format was meant to be. But Yu-Gi-Oh but since then, since we started playing like when we started, GX has already existed. So it wasn't like new. Everything was new to us, but GX has already existed. Tag teams technically already had come out, but briefly they were still pretty new to the game. And I think I. I think I start. Well, started seriously playing when tag teams came out. Yu-Gi-Oh In team up. Because I remember I went to NAIC that year. Okay. And then I learned how to play in Indianapolis from people. So I think you're to your point. Yu-Gi-Oh For both of us, tag teams were like the new thing. And it was truly new and kind of like weird because it's three prizers. After that though, like the fact that, you know, V Stars had abilities that were once per game as opposed to GX's only had it as attacks. That's not really new in my mind. That's just like a. A flipping switch on a thing that already kind of existed. Yu-Gi-Oh It's just repainting over it, you know. Yu-Gi-Oh Like I, I don't think that since we've really played the game there has been anything else truly that I could see and objectively say that's actually new. Maybe like Radiance. Well, Radiance are kind of like a twist on shining Pokemon and Gold stars and Prizm Stars and as specs and like. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh the Prizm Star. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, there, there is like little tweaks here and there. I. You know what I would say probably the new thing that happened since we played was the idea that a two prizer would evolve into a two or a three prizer. Yu-Gi-Oh that is new. And I actually don't think it was a. I think ultimately that's not a good mechanic to really bring back personally. But Yu-Gi-Oh try to think of like level X. Level X. I think level X's might have evolved from a two prizer, but it didn't start as like a two Prizm basic. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm trying to remember for that. But Yu-Gi-Oh like that's the only thing that I could think of potentially. But in that era too, like everything had a level. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Like just in that, in that timeline of the game in like diamond and Pearl era, all the Pokemon had levels. I'm pretty sure it was just that they had very high level Pokemon that were level X's specifically. I mean, you know, free. Free idea for the Pokemon company. If you want to do something really weird, give us trap card Pokemon. Take a page out of what Bandai is doing with Naruto. Just a little bit. Let us play a Pokemon face down on our bench and flip it on our opponent. Oh, that would be so interesting. I don't know how I'd feel about that. I mean, it could have a crazy effect. The problem. Here's the thing, and why. I don't know if that could work in the Pokemon trading card game. Because in the Pokemon trading card game, there is no interaction between players. Correct. And if you don't know what I mean by that, like when. When you play most other card games, like Magic Yu-Gi-Oh Gi. Oh, One Piece Riftbound. When. If Sean and I are battling each other and Sean is on the. It is Sean's turn. He announces an attack. In most other card games, there is a phase that I can do to where I can stop that attack or. Or do something. Play a card. That doesn't happen in Pokemon. When. When it's your opponent's turn, you're just sitting there and promoting the Pokemon. When they say boss or prime catcher or whatever, or, you know, like, you're just waiting for your turn. So I think Pokemon, Pokemon, if they introduce like a trap card kind of deal like that, would introduce such a new level of gameplay within their rules that I don't. The rules. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't. I don't know if they're ready for that. And I think. I think it would take a lot more time before they went into that. But I. I also don't think Pokemon doesn't need to do it because one of the things that I do like about Pokemon is that I don't. I only have to think for half the game. Yu-Gi-Oh that's true. It would be a very. I think it would make the game very unapproachable for younger players. I fully agree with that. Yu-Gi-Oh Because Pokemon. Pokemon is very much like. Even. Even though the entry level is very low in Pokemon, the. The. The high point. I mean, like I just mentioned about how the world championships went this year. Like, the. The ceiling to the Fleer is way bigger than most other card games. Yu-Gi-Oh I think. Well, last piece of news and then we can. We can. We can head off into the sunset for this episode. We did get information. What do you mean, head off into the sunset? No, no, no. It would be heading into the next championship season. That's right. The next. Well, heading. Heading east into the sunrise. Jake. Because Worlds next year, they did announce that it will be moving and it is moving to Singapore, which I think it's. Honestly, it's awesome. It's. Singapore was not on my list of cities, but you know, it's. It is a crazy, futuristic city. I think a lot of people are probably very excited about it. I did post in our discord though. Singapore in August is about to be brutal. Yu-Gi-Oh like, if you know anything about Southeast Asia, the last time of year you want to be there is August. But I think it's really cool. Right. Especially because the. Up until 2019, it was only in North America for the official World Championships. I think they had an event in Japan before. Yu-Gi-Oh they started having official World Championships, but now since we got back from COVID they're starting to mix it up, you know, between like North America and other locations around the world. Right. As we had Japan, London, right previously. Now going to Singapore. It's gonna be cool because that's just gonna be a new area that's never had the Pokemon Championships. You know, when you talk about outside of the US and you know, it's not Japan, it's not Europe, so it's, it's cool to see like a brand new region and I think is probably going to be a good region to host the World Championships. And one of the things that I like talked about and I've thought about on the stream is like they this year went to the Chase center to do the World Championships. They now have to keep up that, you know, maintain of. Of the allure of Worlds because, you know, you never want to go backwards, you always want to go forwards, which is why they conceptualize like Pokemon XP and all that stuff. So very cool, in my opinion. Oh, I'm sorry. The Worlds was in Canada one year in Vancouver, 2013. It's North America, but it's, it's Canada. I think I said maybe America when I was going through. Anyways, just a little tidbit there to make sure. But Yu-Gi-Oh gonna be in Singapore next year. Gonna be. Yu-Gi-Oh hard to get there. I feel like two points that I think are interesting to make here. They announced where Worlds is going to be. There was no announcement about Pokemon xp. Yes. I think Pokemon XP might just be something that they only use for selecting years just simply because of maybe like the venue or something like that of, of what they have based in the location. I truly think that the last two years have kind of been like trial runs for XP to see how well it could do, how, how much they want to do with it and what they could do. So although they could announce later that Pokemon XP is going to Singapore. It did seem kind of odd that when they did announce this, they did not mention Pokemon XP in here. But we also know the dates of the World Championships is going to be from August 13th through the 15th. So if you are one of the top players in the world or maybe you've qualified in your region the last couple times for Worlds and you're pretty confident that you'll be able to do it again, you can go ahead and get your. Get at least like your flight plans, man. Yu-Gi-Oh pretty early, which is really nice. Right? That's. That's really good that we have the dates, in my opinion, a year out from the next World Championships. The one other point I'd like to make is Singapore is, I believe, the first World Championship ever that is probably being held outside of one of Pokemon typical regions, meaning Latam, Oceania, North America or Europe or Japan. Its home country. Singapore, I believe, is part of their, like, Southeast Asia sort of separate region that has its own qualification system that's different. And also I think this is a big signal that they want to grow their presence in China. They've already been like, had their own tournaments there. But I wonder if 2027 is the year where China finally catches up to the rest of the world in terms of their blocks and their set releases. I don't know for sure, but that would be really interesting to me if they make a big push to say this is the year China catches up. Singapore is probably as. It's probably as close as they can get to China in many ways because I don't think that they're ready to host it in mainland China for a variety of many, many political reasons would be my guess. But Singapore is safe in that respect. So I don't know. That's sort of my. My read on this too is it is a big push to expand more so in the Chinese market. So. Yu-Gi-Oh And I mean, you talk about Singapore, honestly, there are pretty good, like esports events that happen in Singapore. Right? The PGL Major Championship is going to be happening in Singapore over in November for Counter Strike Two, if you follow that, or anything of the sort. And they frequently have, you know, other games like, like Dota and League of Legends, things like that pubg that happen like in that region. So I think one of the things that I've talked about with the way that Pokemon is taking the direction of the World Championships is I think they need to esportsify a lot of their stuff in order to continue growing year by Year and I think that this is a good next step because I think Singapore is a pretty good location to try to get in that direction of esports ifying because they need they or I guess they don't need to grow their game, but they want to continue growing their game. Right. They want to continue being like a top card game within the space. You know, people talk about the big three of card games and Pokemon always in it because of what they're doing. And you know, the cash prizes were way bigger this year. I top eight got a, a master set of Prismatic Evolutions. Yu-Gi-Oh And then top 32, I think it was got a master set of, of Surging Sparks, which is also really cool prizing considering the fact that if you got top four, you got $15,000. And then the winner. I did. Was the winner 50 or $20,000? I think it was 50 for Masters. So like, you know, we've, we've talked about time and time again how like games like Riftbound and One Piece and how their prizes are so good. Right. If you're a top level player in the game, like I know like there was this event called the Red Bull Finals in one. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Where it was a specifically invited event you had to qualify for is very exclusive. You know, maybe like I think it was somewhere around like 128 players or something like that. If you got top 32, you got this Luffy card which is worth a lot of money. The participation promo right now for that card is like $800 if you participated in the event and got 128. But if you got top 32 and you got maybe top eight, top four, stuff like that. I have a group of friends. Friends. They call themselves the Snoopy Prep team. They did very well. I think they had like five people place within the top 32 and maybe three of them got top eight in the event, which is very, very good for the team. They walked away with $900,000 worth of their prizing and, and stuff that they got from that event between the six of them. Maybe five or six of them. Like that's insane. Yu-Gi-Oh And so I think, you know, if Pokemon wants to continue to grow and where things are going with overall card games. You know, you talk about Ripbound, like how much is the best of cards in Ripbound worth, Sean? I mean. Yu-Gi-Oh I saw somebody today sending in a, a series of graded like cards to grade the metal best of cards from like a recent event. I think there's like 10 cards or something. And it was a million dollars worth of cards. And if you do not know what the best of cards are in Riftbound, it is when you enter a tournament, a qualifier, a regional, basically in Riftbound and you play a deck. It is a leader based game, which is a lot different than Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh But you have one leader and you build your deck around that one card and the leader is always in the game. It's always, you know, there in play. But if you. Let's say I play Rectan. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Alligator Redaction. Yu-Gi-Oh Big alligator guy. Let's say I play him. But I in the regional get 300th, I go like four and five. Right. In nine rounds, I get three hundreds. If I am the highest placing player with that leader, I get the metal card. That's worth like 2 grand. Oh, it's even if I get 3 hundreds or 10 grand. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Like, point being, like I get this card worth a lot of money and I got 300th and not a winning record at a regional. So I think if Pokemon wants to step up and continue growing their game with the rest of the competitive card game meta, I think what they need to do is they need to esportsify it. They need to put like more competitive prizes on the line. They need to make it a bigger deal. They need to make more storylines as these players. They need more people like Wolf Glick that they can glaze over and, you know, make like these. So then like when you're at home as a casual player, you know, every casual player loves Wolf Glick because they watch his videos, Pokemon promotes him. And every single regional as this high level player, insanely cool person. The trading card game needs to do that too. And they need to, they need to start creating storylines of like LeBron James, you know, you know, like a Steph Curry, you know, they need to get. They need to make players like Andrew Hedrick, Henry Chow, you know, even people like Diego Casiraga, you know, like, like the storylines of Diego potentially becoming the second player ever to one-of-one multiple world championships was such a good storyline for them. And I think they need to do that in order to keep up with the game. Because I know a lot of people right now that are like, why would I play Pokemon when I can one-of-one a lot of money in one piece? You know, it's like, Yu-Gi-Oh it's, it's interesting. I have a tough, you know, we could. This is maybe another, a whole other episode. This is a whole different episode that we need to bring on like a guest pro player. You Know, maybe even pro players from other card games on, like for a whole, whole roundtable discussion. But I think, I think Pokemon this in. In overall, I think Pokemon is doing great things, by the way. I think they're doing a great job growing the reasons why you should play the game at a very high level. And I think they need to continue doing that. That was my point. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Look, I will say I don't know how it would work in Pokemon, but the best of system in Riftbound Regionals. Best idea, best I've seen in trading card games in a long time. I think it's a brilliant idea. It works perfectly with how the game works too, which is a nice bonus. But Yu-Gi-Oh I think it would be really hard in Pokemon, but it's not. Again, they need. They need to make more. They need to continue bringing in the allure. Right. But I think, I think one of the things that makes it hard for Pokemon is the play point system to where like part of the allure for playing in these championships is you get play points to qualify for worlds. Yu-Gi-Oh but again that's. That's part of a different discussion. We could talk about that for like three more hours if we wanted to. But I think Singapore, all in all is a great next location. Yu-Gi-Oh And a step in the right direction. I don't know the venue, but it's Singapore. It's probably going to be a great. Frankly. Yu-Gi-Oh there's going to be a great venue and so I don't know. I probably one-of-one try hard and qualify or anything. Now if they announce a Vegas Worlds, I would try hard. I would get top one. Your try hard now is just get in the casting booth. That's my try. Yu-Gi-Oh my try hard right now is paying rent or everybody just go out, leave a review for the pod, tell all your friends and then Pokemon will bring us out as featured creators next year maybe. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Leave a. Leave a nice review. Leave a like comment. Subscribe. All that jazz and bag of chips. Sean, is there anything else that you want to talk about? Not about the weather, the birds and the bees. Nah, I'm chill. I'm good. My voice is losing it. I'm ready for the next season of Pokemon. I am too. I. The world champions kind of like invigorated Pokemon for me a little bit. You know, just seeing such cool play even though the format sucks. But that's why we continue to do this every single week here on the MetaPod. The Pokemon TCE podcast revolves around the evolving meta. Welcome. Welcome to the 20262027 season. Hope you're here with us and we'll see you within the next episode. 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