Episode 41: EARLY BBWF IMPRESSIONS AND SV-BLOCK TIER LIST

Hello, and welcome back to the Battle Frontier podcast, where we aim to help you level up in your journey as a competitive Pokemon TCG player. I'm Eric Erie, back from my travels, and I'm going to thank my co-host John Orgel for holding down the fort for me last week with that wonderful interview with Omar Cortez and his father, Edgardo. Listening back to it was a really great episode, so I definitely recommend, if you haven't checked it out yet, go back and check that out. It was a discussion of approaching the Pokemon TCG from the competitive perspective of a family and from a non-masters player. So if that's something that sounds interesting to you, go back and check it out. But with all that being said, we're going to do something a little bit different this week. We've got the Return of Blaine's Quiz Show, finally, for people who have been missing it with all of our guests and other things that we've had going on on the show. And then we're going to close things out with a tier list of our opinions on the strength of the entire Scarlet and Violet block, now that every single Scarlet and Violet set has been officially released. But with that being said, John, it's been a little bit since we've had a chance to talk, man. How you been? What'd you get up to this weekend? Yeah, it's been a little bit. I've been good. I played in a league challenge on Sunday at a small card store, like in downtown Richmond, called One-Eyed Jacks. And it was, I think, a 12-man, or 11 players, 11 masters, one senior, Omar, funnily enough, I was there. So that was kind of cool. But yeah, it was me and 11 other players. And I got the first round by, it was free dubs, you know, always nice. And then I got, so I switched up. I know this might make you, I don't know, it might be surprising, but my brother's been playing Golden Go Dragapult a lot lately. And he played it to a challenge a couple weeks back, and got first at that. And I'm like, I like Dragapult a lot. I just have felt really like it, my meta, like my local meta has a lot of Guardi and a lot of Grimmsnarl. And I'm like, well, let me play Golden Go, I feel like it definitely has a better Guardi matchup and Grimmsnarl can be favorable, especially if you get Dragapult involved. And like run techs for it, like I ran Picnic Basket in my list. So you know, there's definitely answers for all that. But so I was going in playing Golden Go, like, all right, I'm going to be finally prepared for the meta in my area. Dragapult's been good, but too often, I've just been losing to Guardi, losing to Joltik Box, losing to like random stuff. It's time to kind of flip it around. So and I think Joltik Box is probably still a bad matchup. For sure. But you can't, you can't account for everything, right? So I can at least like improve my matchup spread a little bit. And so I played, got a first round buy, round two, I play against the, you familiar with the Conkeldurr? Oh, yeah, one that got a guy locally, I've got a guy locally who that is the only deck he plays. Yeah. So this was a newer player, but he was pretty good for his side, it was his second tournament ever. So he, he set up his deck turn two Conkeldurr and Pidgeot EX and swung into my Golden Ego for two prizes and I had no easy response. I tried to get my Dragapult out, but he had since he had Pidgeot, he could boss up anything I was trying to set up on the bench. So it just got to the point where I'm like, well, I mean, I guess I just can't win them all. Like that. If you're trying to engineer a deck, because like the two six, like it's, it's for 250. And then it gets the extra 10 damage from poison going into your turn. So you just get knocked out from point. So yeah, losing the Conkeldurr round two was pretty deflating. But also like, the guy was pretty nice. You know, we had a good chit chat and like, talked a little bit and I felt like, you know, it happens. But there's still two more rounds. I was like, I'm probably not gonna get first, but I'll keep playing. You know, obviously, around three, I get paired up against Hydreigon. So getting all the weird decks. And realistically, it could be a bad matchup. He I think made a pretty big misplay at one turn, where he finally got his Hydreigon ability, like he could finally use Obsidian. Yeah. And he hit the active Golden Go and I had a Golden Go on the bench. And then I think a Pheasant Dippity or something like that. And so he hit and then I had a Dracloak and another Dracloak on the bench. And he goes Obsidian knock, you know, hits the active hits a bench Golden Go then knocks out one of the Dracloaks instead of putting 130 on the Pheasant Dippity. And he asked me as soon as he started, like he announced his targets. He said, Oh, shoot, can I change my targets? And I said, you've already announced your attack and chosen your targets. I don't you know, I didn't let him take it back. So I didn't I know it's a league challenge, but I think he was cut. I realized the important guys are cutthroat up there, dude. There was a kid. Yeah, it gets pretty intense, man, especially the early season ones, I, I maybe should let I don't think it would have made a huge difference. I think I could have still pulled it out without the Fez draw from him knocking something out. But yeah, I think I think I still drew like a top decked either or something that gave me the win like it was a boss or whatever it was. But yeah, maybe look hindsight, maybe I just let him take it and choose something else. But hey, man, you know, it's it's a pretty big error to not just keep the damage on there and not and not take a knockout much better, you know, so basically, that swung it pretty well for me. I was able to draw the last combo pieces I needed to get a knockout to take like the last two prizes before he could, you know, attack again and not take the sixth prize turn essentially. So that was cool. And then the last round was a really interesting match was against a golden go deck, but it was a golden goal, a golden go that was a jolting box. So it was really a bizarre kind of build. I didn't really see the synergy all that well, but needless to say, they set up faster than me. And they were targeting down not my drag drag. I was building up a dragapult because I had a prize my superior energy search probe. So I literally was just trying to like manually get through the deck using like cypher maniacs. Yeah, code breaking to get the energy required, like specific energy required for dragapult and I got there and I was able to like, efficiently, you know, set up six prizes over like two turns with they had like a Joltik and I think they also benched. What's the other one? Pikachu, Marauder, Iron Hands, Magneton, OK, the Magnemite, yeah, it was some some other base, some other state basic Pokemon with a low amount of HP. I think it was it must have been Magnemite then. I mean, that sounds right. Yeah, I think it was Magnemite Magnemite or I don't remember exactly. It might have been. Oh, is it maybe a Gimme Ghoul? They had like, OK, yeah, a 70 HP Gimme Ghoul down there. So I was able to get to like six prizes pretty effectively, or at least like I don't remember exactly what my writing was, but it worked out pretty well to just use dragapult. And I finished three and one in the league challenge and, you know, weirdly enough, I guess at that point in the round for my opponent was three, you know, and so I beat the only undefeated player in the tournament. And I guess that buoyed my opponent's opponents one percentage enough to where I ended up getting first place as the only like there was a bunch of three and ones in there. So I got kind of lucky there. Yeah. Yeah. So that was pretty cool. As the first league challenge win of the season for me after, I think this was the second league challenge I've played in or third, I don't remember the second one I played in a cup. OK, so look, you're on your way to a straight, right? Yeah, man. I mean, that's kind of a goal of mine. At least I was I started the season like wanting to play in a regional. And the more I look at it, the less I'm confident that I can do that unless I don't get selected for staff or regional, which, you know, could happen, obviously. But it's last season, all the regionals I applied for, I did get accepted as staff. So at this point for regionals, not that I'm like overconfident saying that, you know, it's a done deal. But, you know, it's like, well, I mean, that's your priority. You're highly qualified. Yeah. And it's the bread and butter, I guess, if you will. So and then the other problem is like you would need to know ahead of time or you would have to assume you're not going to be selected to register for an event, right? Because normally you won't get the decision of whether or not you've been selected until after registration has already opened and likely right. And what I've done in the past is register and then submit a support ticket to get a refund so I can do that. But that's kind of, you know, it is it's fine. Like it's not that much of a hassle. It's just an extra thing you have to do. But right. Yeah. I don't know. But that's even if I, you know, we'll see. Like it's it's hard. It's still early days in the season. It's still young. Yeah. I mean, we don't even know for sure where all the locations or dates are yet. That's fair. Yeah. We'll see. I would like to play in a regional. It just playing really helps keep my focus as a judge. It helps me stay grounded. It helps me, like, realize the high stakes and pressure that the players are underneath whenever they're playing in tournaments, you know, especially at regionals. It's you know, it's it's silly because I shouldn't feel any pressure at a league challenge, but like I still like come away like with the nerdy like pit sweat and having to use the bathroom after every round and like just I don't know why, but the pressure still gets to me, man. Like and even more so now that I've been playing longer and I don't play as much as I used to. I feel like the few chances I do get to play, I really have to go all in and and try to do my best. And if I don't do all that well, it's like I'm almost letting myself down or like, you know, I don't I don't know when the next chance I'll get to play is. So it's right. It's like, well, now that's, you know, the last time I'll play a challenge for three months or whatever. But you know, that all to say that I had a fun Saturday, Sunday, and then the rest of the weekend was just kind of doing errands, hanging out with friends, kind of local stuff. And then I have my big league cup this Sunday at my tournament at the store I run league at. Okay, so I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, I'll have there's like collect a con going on the same weekend this weekend. So I think there's some players I'll be going to that, but that's like a two day convention thing. So shouldn't have. It sounds like those things like popping up or traveling around like all over the country fairly recently. Yeah. I've gotten to know more and more like the show circuits and like the collector side of stuff by working at this card shop. And yeah, this will be a big one. My friend Ben, who I've talked about, I think in the podcast before, my other friend Christian, they're both be going both days. So I'm excited to see what they, you know, come back and tell me about and I told Ben, you know, get as many illustration or ducklets as you possibly can. And I will spare note, well, I will pay you the market rate for those. So we'll see. Hopefully that comes down to like 10 bucks by this weekend. Because, yeah. Is it up there right now? I was going to say, I was like, I haven't, there's like 15 earlier, but that was like, that was like Saturday or Sunday when I looked, I know from what I'd heard, a lot of the probably come down like black gold and white flair actually aren't doing that well for people from a financial perspective because the card is just more moving. But yeah, obviously that can change it on, you know, at a moment's notice, as soon as somebody decides this is the high value thing and they buy out all the cards on TCG player or whatever. And all of a sudden there's a run on it. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it'll be less than prismatic was for sure. There's no way, like people just don't care about a vanillish EX, a vanillish IR and Trubbish. You know, there, there's not as many fanboys of black and white as there was of the evolution. Of course. So, of course, definitely won't have that. And then, yeah, it's just, this will be a bear of a, it'll be a hell of a set to try to collect too. I think this will break a lot of people and that could be a bad thing too. If people don't feel highly motivated to collect, you know, people might not buy as much sealed. So we'll see. It'll be interesting to see all that shakes out, but it's still, you know, the hype is still cool. Like when I went to the card store that I help out at, they had a huge amount of stuff. I mean a decent amount of inventory, like 50, maybe even a hundred ATVs. Oh wow. Like 50 of each, I think. Uh, and then like the binder collections and all that stuff and, you know, they opened at 10 and everything was basically sold out by 1 PM. Holy cow. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of collectors out there right now, so it'll be, uh, it'll, it'll still be in demand, you know, it might not be as hot as some of the more recent sets, but I still think that, you know, the, the Pokemon collecting markets. Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. It's one of those things where like locally, I know I went to Target and Walmart last week and both of them post-release had nothing on the shelves. And it doesn't, it doesn't surprise me because of the wave and the trajectory that the game has been under following, you know, basically since what surging sparks more or less, maybe even seller crown, seller crown may not have been quite as big, but that was kind of the beginning of it. Right. And now we hit a point where I think this is going to be the crest of the wave. It really feels like it where either it's tough to say that though, because I think that the mega evolution set, you know, especially with the artwork that they revealed today during the Pokemon presents the cards, like the, you know, the mega Gardevoir illustration rare. Some of those things are just beautiful, but black and white. Like you said, it's one of the things where it's going to be potentially backbreaking for people from a collecting perspective, just because of the raw number of illustration rares. Even though it sounds like the pull rates are actually pretty good. I think that the published data I saw was that pull rates for, um, illustration rares are one in every five, four or five packs. So, you know, you buy, you buy an ETB and you should be getting at least two, but the real backbreaking thing is going to be the, you know, the Victini, the Reshiram and the Zekrom, the black, white, and red cards are calculated or theorized to be somewhere in the realm of one in every 500 packs. Yeah. So they're definitely up there. And then the weird thing is that the Victini's there's one in black and one in white, and they're unique cards because they have different set logos and different card numbers. Yeah. But they're the same artwork, literally the same card. Otherwise. Yeah. That's infuriating as a collector. So I don't know. I, it's. Uh, I, I did get, I did, that was one cool thing on Monday. Um, the store that I run Lee get unplugged games. Um, they held all their product for league. Um, they had, so they offered it at slightly above MSRP, which was sick. So I was able to, um, buy an ETB that day. Um, and I did you go black or white? I bought white cause I went with my heart and I was wanting to pull a SIR ducklet. Um, or not SIR, IR, whatever the terminology still is elusive to me. Um, and I pulled a ducklet, um, you know, but for all those that are interested, this is what, yeah, this is the, it's kind of washed out, but there you go. Yeah, there he is. So, yeah, so that's, did you get two illustration rares? Uh, just the one, I got a vanilla ish. Okay. So, uh, I mean, it looks nice. It looks like a cool card, but yeah, definitely not like the most desirable thing. Yeah. Um, and I got like one ex out of it and I got a whimsy cot ex. I got one master ball, which was, um, um, what was it? I think, uh, I forget the Pokemon. It was a dark type Pokemon. Um, okay. For purloin or whatever the rubbish purloin is black and white, right? The cat one. Yeah. I think it might've been purloin. Okay. Um, and that was about it. Uh, I got a couple of energy, but I traded those away for a pokey ball ducklet, um, that my friend, one of my friends, like one of the guys that goes to my league pulled. Um, so that was a worthy trade in my mind. I won't play with the hollow energies and I will cherish that ducklet. So yeah, this may be a hot take. I think that the hollow energies from the set are the ugliest things that they printed in the long. They are, they are not my cup of tea by any means. I like the regular, like the regular non hollow energies. Yeah. Just like the throwback to the old pattern. Yeah, that's fine. But I think I'm with you. Like they don't look all that good. Like they've really done a good job with me. Yeah. They, I mean, they tried to go back to like the old hollow pattern from that era. Right. But it just kind of comes off very, I don't know. Aggressively hollow. It's something like that. The, the black and white hollows that you got for, I think league or some of the worst hollow energies I've ever played with, um, have you ever played with like the play, play, play energies from that? You know what I'm talking about? Like they're super thick, like they don't shuffle very well. They feel really, they stick together really badly. Yeah. So I've sold all the ones that I had because I had a good amount at one point. Um, and now it's like, you know, I mean, if you collect, if you play with them, like, sure, I won't, but I just feel like there's better hollow energies out there. And especially, yeah, like, I don't know if you have a favorite energy take, do you play with a specific type of energy when you, if I have access to them, I will play with EX Emerald energies every day of the week, but which ones are those? Remind me, they used to be called matrix energies for other old head of people, but that are in JIP, uh, Japanese ones were called ADV energies, because I think that that block in Japan is called the ADV block or advanced block because they were the Gameboy advanced games, but they look like, gosh, I don't have one handy. So maybe I do. I think I know what you're talking about, but yeah, it'd be better if you show somebody else, cause it's hard to kind of describe what a hollow energy looks like. We're getting off the rails, but Hey guys, like this is a slow week for us as much as it might be for everybody else because I have these in my Gardevoir deck. Oh, look, look at that. So it's either these or like my Gardevoir deck right now is all of these for all the psychics and then all of the darks are call of legends darks. So call of legends ones are also like, or heart, gold, soul, silver, like either way with the, you know, the, the illustration in the back of it looks really nice, but just to try to get us back on track a little bit, you know, in terms of other things from the Pokemon presents. So we mentioned that the, we did get the kind of what I assume is just going to be the advertisement for the mega evolution set. Um, and we got reveals of, you know, mega Gardevoir, which we'd already seen before mega Lucario, which we had already seen before mega Venusaur, which we had already seen before. And then a new reveal of mega Kangaskhan EX, which actually seems like a pretty decent card. And I, you know, I can't wait to see what the rest of that set looks like from what I understand about it. Literally every single EX in that set though, is going to be a mega, which seems kind of crazy to me. And I think that there's going to be like 12 or 15 of them. Okay. So that's just going to, you know, pretty wild, but it just, so we can get back into the show proper. Like I didn't do anything crazy this week. I didn't actually, I wanted to play. Um, just in a regular store tournament that they were having where they were going to be raffling off like a binder collection from one of the black and white sets, like nothing crazy. Unfortunately, like had to go into work this weekend and got bogged down, got stuck there a little bit longer than I thought I was going to. So had some other, you know, adult responsibilities needed to catch up on at home afterwards and just couldn't make it there in time. I did, um, catch a little bit of Azul's invitational event over the weekend and you know, that kind of fueled, and this is going to segue into one of the topics that I wanted to cover this week with the kind of first impressions of black bolt and white flare. And we saw most of the people playing in that event were either playing Goldengo or Gardevoir and all of the Gardevoir decks were Jealousant Gardevoir and all of the Goldengo decks were just like aggro Goldengo with Genesect. And from that very, admittedly very small sample size, Goldengo seems like it got a lot more out of black bolt and white flare than Gardevoir did. And I honestly think that Jealousant may be one of the most overhyped cards we've seen in a long time. Yeah, I could see that. Um, it definitely is strong, but it can be easily played around in a lot of ways. Um, especially against decks that have a lot of boss or can run iron bundle. Um, if they don't have too Jealousant in play or, you know, like the fact that it's not an attack, uh, it goes back to, we had kind of guard, like we had, uh, we've had, I mean, if you've been playing long enough, we've had stuff coming in and out, like we had Gothitel at one point and Trevenant, um, and the strength of Trevenant was that you could just have a board full of Trevenant, um, because yeah, there wasn't a reason to really have a lot of support Pokemon, but you can't really do that with Jealousant. You need to have the Gardevoir, you need to have other stuff going on to support it. Um, but I mean, maybe I'm saying all that you might be able to run a Jealousant deck. Like I don't, it doesn't have a heavy energy cost and there might, it is a world where you just, you know, attack with Frillish and then set up a board state where you're able to like, you know, super potion and heal or something like that. So it's to be seen how people play stuff. It's still early. You know, I don't think we're going to give some of our opinions, but their first impressions, they're definitely not, you know, you take this and run with it, uh, to worlds at this point, it's more like a jumping off point. I'd say by all means, you know, and then to segue off of that as well, the other big tournament this week, uh, Gabe smart's been hosting a series of tournaments on limitless with, you know, cash pricing associated with them, which is huge. Like kudos to him for that. Uh, you know, we've seen a lot of success in the pocket space from similar types of events, and I think the one that he held yesterday had like 1400 or some, some odd number, over a thousand people signed up for it and participated. And, you know, the trend that I noticed just kind of skimming through that data is that we've seen gold and go continue down that same trajectory. Genesect agro, we're moved away from TM Evo that you get to very nicely play a more consistent deck because you're all just nest ball and buddy, buddy Poffin, you don't have to play ultra ball anymore because Genesect finds all of your evolutions. And then the Gardevoir deck seems to have whiplashed itself back to basically the NAIC type builds where they're all just single price focused, heavy monkey Dory, maybe a couple of copies of TM Devo. So you, that's how you can set up your big tricky plays and noticing that jealousy has kind of fallen by the wayside in that regard. And then, you know, some of the other usual suspects are still kicking around in the mix as well with drag up all getting access to Hilda raging bolt, still just being raging bolt. And then groom snarl kind of, it didn't really gain a ton from this set either aside from air balloon, which is kind of a big deal in that drag or Gardevoir matchup specifically. But otherwise I'm going to do all the usual suspects still seem to be in play. And then for some reason, right now in the online sphere, at least there's a lot of Charizard as well. Okay. And I don't know if I can fully explain why that is. It's just, I think it has a decent Golden Go matchup and like, you know, can kind of hold its own against Gardevoir and groom snarl, I guess. Uh, that'd be my take. You know, it Golden Goat's really hard to knock out a Charizard, especially if they get early like a pressure. Sure. Oh, yeah. I mean, and you have to you access now like that. I totally understand. Yeah, that's fair. But the fact that Charizard has always had a bad drag up all matchup. And I feel like it's groomed star matchup can't be that amazing just because groom snarl can theoretically damage cap the Charizard player at 180 or 240 for the entire game while you set up this big spread play at the end of the game. Yeah, yeah. I don't really know enough as to why Charizard might be. I mean, just my my think is maybe the people just think of it as a Golden Goat counter. You're running fire and you can put you in. You know, I think Flareon had it like I saw Flareon pop his head up because of Golden Goat's popularity. Probably for the same reason. So we'll see. I mean, I think my thought is Golden Goat will probably be the most it'll be like where we had Tarabox really big into going into Baltimore. And then by the time the tournament shows up, I think it'll be kind of played out and the popularity will still be there. But at Worlds especially, it'll be really interesting to see if top players still play Golden Goat. You know what I mean? Sure. Or if they go back to the deck that they got them there or they kind of innovate with like a control deck or something like that. So I do think we'll see a lot of that and a lot of people sticking with, you know, comfort picks and what have you. But it wouldn't surprise me to see Golden Goat go deep. If you think about, you know, we had Sanoske with the Roaring Moon deck getting second place last year or even, you know, somewhat tangentially similar Jesse Parker's Maridon deck, just a fast, low to the ground, aggressive deck that plays large quantities of boss. Being able to run these evolution decks, these more setup based decks, I should say, just run them off the table. I mean, it would not surprise me to see Golden Goat go super far, but we'll probably have to circle back, get some more online data, do some more play testing, try to gather our thoughts on everything. I know I did. Play, how many rounds did I play in that event last night before I had to drop? I think five for I just it was too late. The event didn't start till 630 or seven. And, you know, I'm an old man, John, I had to go to bed at some point. But I had some weird I had some weird matchups, too. I have I played Grimmsnarl and I played a list that was more similar to what Ian Robb and Tim Franklin played at NAIC with multiple Fez and Dippity, multiple copies of Nestfall. And. I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I also think that Grimmsnarl does not really lend itself super well to best of one formats. OK, I had some unfortunate prizes, and it's really hard to come back from that when you're just only get to play the single game and ended up playing against, you know, Raging Bolt once or Owl List Bolt once that won the coin flip one second, got to turn one baby bolt attack on my lone snow right when my other snow was prized. And so I never got a frost loss out that game I played against two EV boxes that won the coin flip, chose to go first for that doesn't really matter. They always choose first. I always choose second, but just popped off with turn two. One of them played Pidgeot and set up this board where they had leafy on on top of an EVX, so it's very difficult to TM Devo it with the backup EV on the bench with energy ready to go. And it's just the and then the other one. But that was a more like weird game where I just didn't draw a supporter and got angel lighted out of the game. And so just some weird matchups, probably, you know, like you said, the flurry on decks kind of on the rise due to the popularity of Goldengo and just catching strays in the grim, sterile department. I know there were a few other grim, sterile decks that did manage to go pretty deep into the event. And I think that it's one of those things where you just kind of play a matchup roulette. And my concern is that that's a lot of what this format that's going to be going into worlds, because it still seems pretty dang wide as far as what is and is not viable. Yeah. Yeah, definitely still pretty open, which is good. I think that's kind of what you want in a new format. You want it to feel like anything has a chance and that there's a lot of work to be done in order to figure out what's the best pick and what I mean. Even if we have an idea of maybe where the top plays like Goldengo did gain a lot by having Genesex air balloon, all that stuff. That's undeniable. Like you can't, you know. Ignore that if you're playing testing for worlds, you're gonna have to test against gold and go But it'll be interesting like we we see like Garty, you know got jealous And is it good like we have to test it and like maybe it's very situational. Maybe it just comes up again Like giving Garty an extra tool, you know, they ran but do is it better than Badoo? Like is that kind of the thought process you go through right like it's frillish a better attacker than Badoo Even that, you know, we still have to figure out so I think there's just a lot of homework Like this is the first week one essentially of the format, right? We haven't even had a full week since its release date So this is just kind of the exciting trying everything new phase where you shouldn't really I mean I say that maybe have your idea have your favorites like have a deck that you kind of gravitate towards or Like a lot But be open to testing new stuff to I mean like I look at like Azul's process right now I mean granted he's a content creator So he's gonna be testing all the different decks to make as many videos as possible Sure but I don't think that's a bad approach as a player at least for the first week of a new format is to get a Feel for all the major decks like to just kind of bounce around a little bit And get a say of like, okay You know, is this a deck that I think has legs will go far or do I think it's just something that is kind of like a Temporary thing like this jealous and good or is it just over overhyped like you said, so Yeah, I don't I think I agree with you. I don't think jealous since like the I don't know if it's the most overhyped card ever. I mean we've had a lot I mean hyperbole fuels content John. I mean, come on. Yeah for sure for sure, you know, that'll be the clickbait You know title of the podcast for sure is jealous and overrated. It's literally just gonna be all caps jealous. It sucks Yeah, I mean, it's got the suckers maybe right on its tentacles Yeah, it'll be I don't know I'm excited to just kind of like I played a lot of gold and go the last couple days Like old list and then now the new one on live and now I'm like gonna try them right on out this week and try that and feel how that feels and see if like Does electric really generate like does electric really help out the deck or is it just better to run? I mean, I think Zekrom really helps the deck out a lot There's no way to deny that like having that closer is huge. It was really missing from right on So like having a deck like and then you know, you have Magneton which is really good So, I don't know. It'll be interesting to see kind of how it all shakes out I haven't really kept up with what games been doing, but I did watch the Azul tournament as well And I thought the control list that Gabriel Fernandez was running was pretty cool I think it's pretty bold to try to Predict the meta enough to run a control list week one. Yeah of a format That was very interesting, but he tried it and like yeah I think the fact that a lot of the golden goes ran scissor kind of cost him in the end He wasn't able to really account for that spoilers. I guess I should have said that earlier, but He got but he got bumped by two of the golden goes running. Yeah. Yeah, so But that was cool I think there's some legs with control right now like the fact that air balloons such a powerful card means that switch will be played And you can run like he did the melodic so you have an answer to Basically prevent your opponent from being able to retreat and so you can well if he was playing what? melodic knackly and Sko villain, right Yeah, I think it was pseudo wudo over. Oh, you're right. You're totally right. Yeah, because it has a slightly better attack I think it's the thing is it's got it. It's lower retreat cost. Oh Yeah, that makes sense too yeah, you can air balloon a pseudo wudo knackly is a little bit thicker That guy has three retreat Yeah, no, everyone's yeah pretty good card But I think that's the cool thing is like It I bet that's pretty good. I think control will be like a viable thing Maybe not at worlds, but definitely like if the format becomes stabilized after worlds like you'll definitely as people aren't respecting Retreat lock, you know, we've seen it when tournaments before, you know I mean if it's not ready for worlds I wouldn't be surprised to see it pop up for what's I think Pittsburgh is the first North American regional Mm-hmm and having something similar to what we saw in Baltimore this year with the Noivern cornerstone decks, you know Something in that vein wouldn't surprise me to have it show up at the end of the day Yep. Yeah, so that'll be cool Yeah, I'm excited to see what comes out of this format, I don't know I don't have any more thoughts I'm just kind of rehashing the same two thoughts over and over again. So we'll move on to something else Unless you got anything else you want to talk about no I think now's a good a time as any we can go ahead and jump over to our Blaine's quiz show and then afterwards we will hit up that to your list and So it's been a while since we've done this John and I actually had to have a discussion about who was doing Blaine's quiz show this week but If my memory serves me correctly the last edition of Blaine's quiz show that we had on the show was John asking me about obscure references to Pokemon or obscure references to Japanese mythological creatures based on you know the origins of the given Pokemon and I did better than I thought I would do in that category But that being said it means that it is my turn to present Blaine's quiz show to John this week And so if you know if you need a refresher or this is your first episode that you're listening to Blaine's quiz show will Be a series of three multiple-choice questions Each correct answer will award John with one point He has one hint available to him throughout the course of these three questions that he can take on any of the given questions But if he is able to answer all three questions correctly without utilizing the hint, he will earn a bonus point And so John, are you ready to jump into things? I'll do my best. Perfect. So with that Pokemon presents We did see Chris Brown revealed the artwork for the World Championship promo this year with some pretty cool things We saw some of the Pokemon that were featured on that card included things like Revivirum Munchlax, Psyduck, Pikachu, Eevee and some other, you know fan favorites or otherwise in the case of you know, Lickitung I don't know a ton of people that are fans of Lickitung But that put me in the mindset of bringing up a topic that I've wanted to include for a little bit and that is World's promos and all right, so we will go ahead and jump into our first question here and a little bit of a softball because I'm fairly confident you'll get this one but what Pokemon has been featured more than any other on the artwork for the promos from the World Championship and Your choices are Pikachu Eevee Psyduck and Togepi This is like I know that Pikachu is probably the easiest answer and I'm kind of just leaning towards that but Psyduck also Sneakily has been on every World Championship promo at least for the last like 15 years like since 2011 so I think I'm gonna go Pikachu just because That's the brand mascot, but I'll be kind of sad because it could be Psyduck. So Pikachu is my final answer Okay, and Unfortunately, the answer is Psyduck. Psyduck in fact is the only Pokemon that has been featured on every single world's promo since TPCI took over the game All 19 of them you go back Psyduck is featured in one way or another and almost all of them are actually Psyduck the Pokemon the one exception I think was 2015 where it's like the duck boat, but it's a Psyduck Yeah, and other than that is literally there just is a Psyduck on every single card man, I Feel bad about that Well, you'll have a chance to redeem yourself with the answer that you provided on your first question with this second question And I want to know how many times has Pikachu been featured on the artwork for the world's promos and your choices are 11 13 15 and 17 Man Okay, there's only a few ones where he's not on there I was just looking at funnily enough I was just looking at some of the world championship promos over the last few years in preparation for my Possible I was doing something similar But nothing is diabolical as these two questions unfortunately, but I let's go. I think 15 is probably what I'm leaning towards. I mean you said 19 total I think 15 because there's been some that like the tropical title. I mean, I don't know if he's in that one. I Know there's like two or three where he's not in there So the question is you think do I think it's more than two or less or just two? Hmm let's go 17. I think he's still pretty popular He'll be right next to Psyduck most of the time. Let's go 17. Okay, and Shockingly Pikachu has actually only been featured 13 times and I had a whole list pulled up I unfortunately cannot seem to find my phone at the moment So I do not have access to my notes app, but a lot of the early world's promos actually do not feature Pikachu I know 2004 it was not featured in particular I actually don't think it's on the first tropical beach promo either and there was a whole stretch from Because I know for sure it's on 2005 and 2006, but I think from like 2007 to 2009 It was not on any of the promos. And so a lot of the early ones just did not feature Pikachu But they did have that old reliable Psyduck That's okay. We've got one more question. You do still have your hint intact Yeah, and this one's gonna be a little different from how we normally approach the show I have a list of eight Pokemon here for you and from this list of Pokemon I want you to pick out three of the four that have been featured multiple times on world's promo artwork So on this list all four of the potential answers do exist So four of these eight Pokemon have been featured at least twice on world's promo artwork But I only need you to name three and your choices are Eevee Alolan Exeggutor Bidoof Wingull Whalemur Oshawott Munchlax and Teppig All right, I'll definitely use my hint since I don't have another chance to use it Your hint is that there are not two Pokemon from the same generation in The correct answer so all four Pokemon are from different generations All right, so I know Alolan Exeggutor Has been featured a lot I should at the the caveat to the to all of this and I should have said this at the top my mistake is that this Excludes the artwork that was revealed today Uh Okay, cuz I does yep. Okay, because otherwise Psyduck is on 20 and Pikachu is on 14 Sure, but and then I guess a little an Exeggutor isn't repeated if that's the case so Context clues help. All right There's also like I was looking at the promos There's like the museum one from 2019 and in the museum one any of the previous world's artwork that from other world's cards does not count I did not count those entries. So if it was a picture of another world's promo those were not counted again Okay Because I know exactly what card you're talking about. Yep. Yep. Yep. So I was like, oh that helps me At least I can think about what's in there. Oh Well, dang, all right, I Think Tepig has been featured in a couple. They like to have the starters. I'll go Tepig I think Bidoof has been in a couple it's definitely got like front and center and one of them and then might be in another one Hmm So I'll have you because there are potentially four I want you you can give me four Pokemon and only three of them need to be correct Right. So so far we said Tepig and Bidoof are two of the answers you've locked in right? Okay Let's go Eevee. Okay I guess with that logic You like well more Welmer or Wingle so we'll go Wingle just to give it the tropical theme and Unfortunately, John you you have missed the target multiple times here. The four correct answers were still Alolan Exeggutor Bidoof Welmer and Oshawott actually So like you said they do like the starters every year after a generation has been released the artwork has featured all three of the starters from that given generation and then for whatever Reason for the Vancouver one, I guess because they have otters in Canada They did feature Bidoof, but they also featured Oshawott again. Okay, and then Bidoof was also on another earlier Edition of I believe tropical tidal wave or tropical wind from the 2000s. Alolan Exeggutor has definitely been featured Now I believe this year is its third time that's that it's actually been on the card just because it's always tropical it's easy to throw a palm tree looking Pokemon in the background of a card and Welmer was the other surprise where again it got picked up on that Vancouver card in addition to an earlier tropical tidal wave Okay, so Unfortunately, oh for three this week. I thought for sure the Psyduck one I thought that was a softball and I thought that the Pikachu one was a little bit tougher But I expect that's where I expected you to use your hint Okay So I tried I tried to map things out a little bit. I tried to strategize you're much better at quizzes than I am It seems like I I went full send into it and just ended up, you know falling flat on my face But that's okay. I had fun, you know, these are some cool cards if you get a chance I know people don't necessarily own these cards If you get a chance, it's a fun one to go back and look at for sure a lot of these There's a lot of history involved with the cards, you know, you get to see some of the locations I have a couple of them. Fortunately, I've been able to go to 2014 and 2015 and those are some of the cards I cherish the most Especially, you know 2015 Being a competitor that year and I'm sure that's the same for you Like, you know, you go back and like I don't know sentimental you are Especially now as we get older But It's definitely fun to go back and look at like from time to time The player promos you get for some of the bigger tournaments you playing. I mean I still have my world, my tropical beaches from getting top 16 in 2012. And I don't know if I'll ever sell them. Honestly, it's kind of especially like I played with them too, which was just probably not all not all of them. I think the top 16 ones have never been played, but I definitely played with the top 32 ones at some point, which retrospectively was one of the stupidest things I could have done. But, you know, it was to get them graded. No, I haven't yet. I have them. Like sitting in top loaders, I could transfer them over and get them sent to PSA through some means. But I just haven't pulled the trigger on it. Yeah, I feel that there's not a lot of cards I would get graded. But those would be like, I think top of the list would be like the World Championship promos just because you want to keep like, not so much in purposes. Not so much because I want to get a 10. But yeah, just preserve preservation. Like you don't want to risk flooding or something like that damaging them or I don't know. It's a nice insurance policy. Yeah, as much as it can be. Yeah, I should probably get around to that at some point. But sure, sure. I mean, yeah, grand scheme of things. It's, it's, it's expensive cardboard, but it's just cardboard. Like, you know, it has a lot of value sentimentally, and my financially truthfully, but it's not more important than other things, necessarily. So, yeah. But you know, what do I say? We're talking about Pokemon every week on this podcast. It's the most important thing, Aaron. Most important. Get your cards graded. Yeah. So that ends us with Blaine's quiz show. Unfortunately, no shift in the score this week. But we can continue with the latter half of our episode, which is just going to be a nice, fun, lighthearted tier list of the Scarlet and Violet expansions for the Pokemon TCG. So just here on tier maker, we've got a list of every single expansion. And we're going to be talking about the strength of these sets as far as, you know, whatever, whatever suits your fancy, whether it is raw power level of the cards within the set, or their impact on the game. I think, specifically, it would be the fairest thing to do would be the at the time of their release, because I know that obviously some sets get a little bit better as other later sets get released. But it would probably be the fairest to compare everything the same, and just say how strong were these sets when they came out? That sounds cool. Let's do it. Okay. So I think we, you know, we'll just kick it off right at the beginning, just with Scarlet and Violet base set. And I'll be honest with you, at the time that this set came out, I was still not yet back playing the game heavily competitively. So I'm going to lean on you for how strong this set was when it was released. Um, honestly, I think it's either A or S. From a competitive standpoint, we have some of the most played cards, you know, Gardevoir, number one, and then Arvin, number two, both of those cards saw immediate play when they came out. You know, Gardevoir, I think, for that era, when we had all the tools with refinement and Shining Arcana, it took a little bit to like, fine craft a list. I think we had some weird hiccups at the start of it. But yeah, within a few months, Gardevoir was asserting its dominance. The only thing that might keep it from S would be the fact that there's not a lot past that. You know what I mean? We have, I would say a little bit of the pushback. You do still have Marite on an electric generator from this set. And I think that they were pretty immediately impactful as well. And we have the Nest Ball reprint, if I'm correct, right? Nest Ball's in there. Ultra Ball, Rare Candy. You know, all things considered, this is a base set. And I think that it's a good base to build off of. So I wouldn't mind putting this up in S. I think that if this set didn't exist, a lot of other archetypes within this block would fall flat on their face. Sure. Did we get Artisan in Scarlet and Violet's base? So that's a huge statement to talk. No, we did not. It was Mezigoza. Artisan came out in the next set. Okay, sorry. I guess going right into the next set, how they evolved. I think a little less impactful. I would say, trying to think through, like, Artisan's obviously a great supporter. I think Superior got reprinted in here. Backscaliber and Xianpower in there. But other than that, I mean, this set's mostly a dud in my mind. Like, it's got some cool looking cards. But as far as actual impactful cards, especially around the time that it came out, this feels kind of like a, you know, maybe a B tier set. Yeah, I'd put it in probably B or C. C feels a little bit better. Like, kind of middle of the road, right? Like, enough to where it was meta relevant, but not, you know, like, it wasn't a dud. Sure. Kind of right in the middle. Okay. I think this this next one is going to be a little contentious in my mind. So, you know, obviously, Obsidian Flames has Charizard. It has Pidgeot. What else does it have though? Arvin reprint. It's got a lot of really terrible Japanese themed deck EXs that bring absolutely nothing to the format. And I think my question is, does the presence of Charizard and Pidgeot outweigh the weakness of the rest of the set? I think it prevents it from getting below C tier. Okay, that's just a bend. Like, do I think it's above C tier? I mean, Charizard and Pidgeot carry pretty hard. They do. So I think have Cleffa in the set, if I'm not mistaken. That is correct. So that's another impactful card. It's still played in a lot of meta relevant decks today. But yeah, I definitely not, you know, the time it came out, Charizard obviously made a huge impact. You basically had a huge, you know, meta deck all in one archetype with Charizard and Pidgeot. But beyond that, yeah, I don't really I think that but I think that's enough. Like Charizard has been dominant at stretches. Okay, not as dominant as Gardevoir. I don't think it goes all the way to A tier, but I think B tier or C tier. I'll leave it up to you. I can get I can give you B. I can give you B. Okay. You know, I think unfortunately, the problem is, the thing that's concerning to me is that if you remove Charizard EX and Pidgeot EX from this set, this is like an F tier set, in my mind. Yeah. But though they are two extremely powerful cards that were obviously immediately impactful, you know, this set came out, and Charizard was considered the best deck for a good bit after the release of this set, especially once the Arvin build had been popularized by William Azevedo and everybody down in the LATAM region. Seems like a good place to put it. Yeah, I'm with you. Like if you don't have those two Pokemon, it definitely goes to F tier. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Speaking of a set that I don't think it's F tier, but no, I probably put it in D tier. Like, there's only a few. Oh, I guess Mew is a really impactful card. And yeah, Ditto saw play. And I mean, beyond that, that's the problem. This set, it's like you've got Ditto, you've got Mew, you've got the 70 HP Charmander. And when doesn't like add anything new archetype wise, like when Charmander is the selling point, though. Yeah, that's, yeah. I think this might be a D tier set as far as competitive impact is concerned. Yeah, I'd agree with that. There's a couple meta relevant cards, but realistically, it doesn't shake the ground, you know, it doesn't really make waves. And that's okay. For me, like these collector sets, I don't want them to be, you know, the super impactful Earth Shattering set a lot of times, like, because a lot of times they're harder to get a hold of for sealed products. And even some singles can be hard to get a hold of it at the start of it. But yeah, I think these were I feel comfortable putting that too. Cool. Next up would be Paradox Rift. So the introduction of the Ancient and Future Pokemon, we get access to Iron Hands came out in this set, Iron Valiant came out in the set, Sada's Vitality was released here, Raging Bolt was released, but at the time the deck was Raging Bolt, Sandy Shocks, so that's a little. But we did still have access to, you know, Ancient Boxes, an archetype that was, you know, fringe viable. Oh, actually, no, it wasn't because Baby Roaring Moon is Temporal Forces, isn't it? Yeah. So nevermind. No. So we had access to Big Roaring Moon here. And Iron Hands and Iron Valiant. Turbo Moon. Sure. I mean, that a little bit later on was when it was more impactful, I'd say, when you had the addition of the baby, but the Roaring Moon saw play with Dark Patch and Sada's and, you know, all that kind of stuff and Radiant Greninja and all that. I like this set a lot. I think it's an A tier set. Like it really has a lot of staying power. Like, you know, was Turo in this set or was that later? No, Turo was in the set. The set actually also has Goldango in it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, didn't have E-Search Pro at the time, but no, but I mean, you said you want to like look at them when they came out when they came out from A tier because I'd say it's hard to put a hard to put away. I think A tier now, but like maybe a B tier when it came out. Sure. Like the way to look at it. Yeah. And I think that that's totally fair. Like we saw cards from this high B tier cards, Ironhands alone shook the meta up quite a bit. Yeah. We saw cards from this set in the finals of the Latin American International Championship at the first event where this was legal. We saw Iron Valiant Entei against Meridon with two Ironhands in it. So just like an Ironhands focused deck, Lost Box deck started including Ironhands. Like, you know, and again, maybe it's carried heavily by Ironhands, but you also had the Ancient of Future supporters that are not that make it so other archetypes like Ancient of Future as archetypes are not possible without these cards. Yeah, I'd almost put it in A tier because like if we're putting Charizard or Obsidian Flames in B tier based solely on Charizard and Pidgeot, I think we can put Paradox Rift a little bit higher because it gets carried to B tier by Ironhands and then goes a little bit higher with all the other great additions it has. That's fair. I'm going for it. Well, this is a nice, nice little progression we got here because we're going to round out this these tiers here with this next set because I cannot think of a single competitive card from Paladin Fates. No, Moonlit Hill's about it. I think that was the only card that came out of that. Yeah, that's because this is the shiny set. Okay, there is one, but again, not enough to really carry it here is the Ability Charmeleon that's got the Missed Energy effect was from this set, but that is not enough to salvage a set that is 99% reprints. Yeah, this was one if you're a player, you don't have to buy a single pack of in your decks will probably be just fine like realistically for sure. Next up was the next Ancient and Future set with Temporal Forces. So this was where we got Baby Moon. I'm actually struggling to think of what else was released in this one. Was this where we got Iron Crown? Iron Thorns? Iron Thorns? Yeah, Iron Thorns. No, no, no. Thorns is Masquerade. Oh, really? Was it that way? Yeah, it was. Okay. So we had this was Iron Crown and Iron Leaves and Iron Boulder though. Yeah, I'm struggling too. Oh, Iron Boulder. Okay, cool. So I'm trying to think of what the other what the Ancient cards would have been. This would have been. Let's see. I was pretty confident about the card list for a lot of the earlier sets, but these middle, middle of the road, Scarlet and Violet, just stuff doesn't really nothing stands out and I think that that's a problem. Like, you know, we had Iron Leaves, Gouging Fire, Walking Wake. Oh, so I'm sorry. This is where Raging Bolt was released then. If those two are in this. Okay. Frigaraff. The Dunsparce was in here. Uh we did get Poffin. That's a pretty big one. What set was Prime Catcher in too? Prime Catcher was this was the first Ace or the no, this wasn't the first A-Spec set, but this is where Prime Catcher came out. So that's one selling point. Yeah. Oh no, this is the first A-Spec set. Oh my goodness. I'm so so off here. So Buddy Buddy Poffin and Prime Catcher. And Raging Bolt and then well, I mean at the time, Raging Bolt was pretty bad. True. Yeah, that's fair to say, but we do have Roaring Moon. So Ancient Box was a thing and it did definitely see use at the time. Iron Crown was pretty immediately impactful. Fluttermane was in the set. We have the Metang with Metal Maker. Yeah. Buddy Buddy Poffin. I think you said that already. Yeah. Rescue Board, Myst Energy, Neo Upper Energy. But you have to think about still context of when the set came out. Yeah. I don't think it's as impactful as Paradox Rift. I think it's probably either. You don't think so. You don't think so. I was actually gonna say it's more impactful than Paradox Rift purely off of the introduction of the A specs. Okay. That's fair. Yeah. I mean that did cause a big shake up. I just think the Pokemon wise, it didn't really introduce a whole lot. No, like you you saw Turbo Hands was a thing very briefly and Ancient Box was the only other real new deck that came out of this and there are some other cards that definitely, you know, obviously saw play later down the line in the form of Raging Bolt and Metang when paired with Dialga, but I think the A specs in particular and Buddy Buddy Poffin. I think that that's enough to put this up into A tier for me. Okay. i won't fight you on it i i would put it below paradox or if that'd be my okay that's fine we can do that yeah uh the next one i and you'll have to probably i'll die on this hill this is tonight like masquerade is an s tier set hands down yeah and i even think when it came out it was an s tier set that's fair to say like dragapult alone carries it and then yeah you just get so many different things like ogre pawn you get like that carried uh it made reggie drago at deck like it took a little bit to figure out but like once people did again even just when it was released raging bolt immediately was viable yeah yeah yeah yeah monkey dory came out in this set true and even when people only threw one monkey dory into their deck they thought that it was a broken card and so i can it's funny i think if you went back and replayed the naic where andrew hedrick won i wonder if more people would actually have two or three monkey dories in their guard of vortex no for sure and if so how things would change there and also like you said reggie drago may have honestly seen more play retrospectively at that tournament now that people understand the power level of these cards a little bit more but i guess then the question becomes was it stronger than scarlet violet base set um i'd say it was i think you know it introduced multiple archetypes um scarlet and violet had carnivore and some other stuff but yeah i think twilight masquerade is one that we'll be playing with uh for a long time um yeah i i don't know maybe what do you think do you think it's better than scarlet and violet um yeah i mean i think that that's pretty pretty fair to say like we've got i'm trying to see if there are any other cards that we're missing here um frost last came out wasn't super great then too impactful at the time um some people did attempt to play quad thorns this early but it wasn't super strong quite yet it didn't have all of the tools that it needed ursa luna came out in this set too and that was immediately played as well yeah yeah that was and unfair stamp was actually released here too so no i would put this like a lot of these aspect sets got a little bit of a nudge over the early sets just because the aspects are that powerful and this is also the set at the time if we had known it's weird because you're kind of you're looking at it retrospectively but also trying to view it from the lens of when it first came out i think secret box was probably massively underplayed when it came out and we is just one of the most broken aspects that if not the most broken aspect they've ever printed realistically yeah it's so interesting when it came out nobody played it and people were like why would you play this card and now it's like oh it's better than computer search was you can discard three cards and search for four like it's insane so i think yeah definitely with hindsight with the benefit of hindsight we would probably put it higher than scarlet and violet yeah i think that's where i want to put it and real quick before we move on i just did some due diligence because there were some cards we glossed over for paldea evolved and i actually think that there might be a case to move it up to b tier okay so we ignored the fact that iona was released in this set oh yeah there was a reprint of boss um squawkabilly was in here to just fuel agro archetypes jet energy existed which immediately saw play in a number of archetypes including things like um lost tina super rod was reprinted here and then like you called out artisan was already there um only other thing would be bravery charm also came out which did see some play at the time that it was printed so i think that this may be a little bit better than c it just seems like such a blah set when you think about it yeah i think you're right like maybe we don't think about there's no like archetype that comes from it but yeah there's definitely a lot of core cards that are seen in a lot of decks now and then yeah even i don't know i don't know was played a lot like as a three of a four of immediately when it came out um one of the most impact and then boss's orders a reprint you know that that unfortunately or fortunately i guess if you want depending on how you look at it you know that happened but i would have been probably fine with a format with just counter catchers but here we are okay let's see so next up is shrouded fable this is interesting to me it's like one of the few mini sets i feel like that had a huge impact going into i think this was going into worlds right yeah um from from naic and having pheasant dippity alone just shook so much up and like i mean there's not a whole lot outside of festivity i mean there's some good stuff like binding mochi and oh do you get dust nor night stretcher kira dust nor i'm so sorry and that night stretcher so i guess yeah i'm speaking out of turn no this i think it's a b tier set or yeah a tier even for the quality of you know cards you get for how small the set is um i think it's definitely high yeah i think we could put it up here like i would definitely put it above these two and i think that it's good enough to be up here i'm not sure if i would put it above these two sets no as far as well maybe it goes here maybe pheasant dipity is a pretty good card yeah yeah i mean it's seen as a one of in almost every deck at this point or at least contemplated as a one of in almost every deck um so yeah i think shroud of fables is it'll go down as one of the most impactful sets we've seen in this block um yeah i think that's fair cool so next up would be stellar crown and i'll let you go first on this one and see if i disagree i mean yeah it's i don't think it's c maybe it is like there's tarapagos trappagos saw a large amount of play the noctalis saw a large amount of play in like terror box but after we get out of that we have briar crispin crispin is pretty important um but was it in class and it got printed no not not as much as it has been now right i think once we lost uh like once reggie drago rotated out i think that's when this set like when crisping became a lot more popular and played because it just the archetypes made more sense at that point i mean crispin saw play in the um iron thorns deck that won worlds so we did see some wait that's not right no no no that turbo energized at that point yes yeah that was shredded fables uh yeah we didn't get stellar until later um yeah i don't know i think c or d or c or b sorry uh i'm pretty i'm pretty happy to see like it's something it was marketed as the tarapagos set yeah that was basically the only thing that came out of it and then even when that came out that archetype was not that great like yes it did see a lot of success and from a lot of high level players and saw a lot of play but i don't think it was even necessarily as good as maybe you know the popularity would lead you to believe like it still had a rough reggie drago matchup you could see difficult times into decks like palkia dust noir and other just kind of like bomb run you off the board strategies or even just aggressive decks if you couldn't set up like if you opted not to play buffalo you could have a hard time with something like maridon of all things and you know pre-rotation that was still a concern so i think the state it just the staying power of it is such that it kind of is forgettable like you don't really think about tarapagos much anymore no i mean and then noctowl you know still has a place with raging bolt now um and it saw some play in raging bolt i think when this set came out but it definitely was you know that helped raging bolt a lot um but yeah i don't think this had a lot of staying power if you want to think about that um and we're talking about it when it came out but yeah it made an impact for sure but it definitely wasn't like a lasting one sure you will um i think surging sparks is similar like i don't know what in this set it's got energy search pro yeah that's a good one um you we did it's got precious trolley so this is the set where cloth became a deck because precious trolley existed sure energy search pro may put goldengo back on the map yeah pikachu immediately went into lost box um alolan executor went into dredgy drago right away archaladon became its own archetype and even though that's always been like a b-tier deck at best it still existed and was viable and you know outside of that our latias also came out here for the big basic decks that's true those things are all supporting players though like there's nothing that is an archetype that came out other than maybe you could call pikachu being the star of it um and then a lot of like i mean the aspects are important don't get me wrong but like i don't think there is earth shattering as prime catcher was or secret box ended up being um you know i mean maybe golden goat obviously isn't as good today if you don't have energy search pro um but yeah i mean i i put it in probably c tier above stellar crown i don't think it but you're telling me you think you think this is worse than obsidian flames and paldea evolved okay um yeah maybe you're right probably not worse than paldea but i think i put it below obsidian just because like there's not a long lasting impression i'm getting from it um that's so interesting i don't i mean i guess you're right you know purchase trolley kind of fell off after this set energy search probably still sees it's seen in one deck that's it well right it's tailor-made for that deck though sure you know syrano sees play but the deck would still be good even if you didn't run energy search bro like you could build golden go without energy search bro like sure it helps a lot but like you have vessel you would build it differently and then i mean golden ago was played before and played after it wasn't like it uh revolutionized it i'd say okay i don't know i i think i don't know like other than pikachu like i don't see i don't know yeah i mean bloody ass is huge for a lot of different decks it helps i i think that's a broken card that probably should never got printed in my mind i don't disagree it's a silly card like it just giving everything free retreat like if it gave evolution pokemon free retreat it would probably be a better card but like the fact that it gives basic pokemon like you can go turn one just pivot into whatever you want to act is like kind of silly so i don't know but i mean it's impactful in that regard like there's a couple cards that really but i think that's you know the same feeling i got with obsidian where it's like a couple cards are impactful and the rest of the set is pretty forgettable okay no that's that's that's a fair justification i think it's got a couple a couple more impactful cards but maybe not maybe the quantity of cards that are impactful might be higher but the quality of them might be lower so that i mean it's definitely lower than shrouded fables as far as like lasting impact you know what i mean well yeah i was comparing it directly to obsidian yeah and i think that you know pidgeot and charizard have still popped their heads up from time to time or at least attempted to see play and for the most part a lot of the surging sparks cards just don't see play anymore sure uh next up is another this is a weird one for me and i'm definitely biased as well because i really like the ev deck but that's the only new the problem is that the rest of the set is reprint so this is like well well okay like oh but do came out here that's true so but do shook up a lot i don't think it's quite the level of shrouded fables as far as many sets go that are impactful but like yeah but do we had um what else all the evs and i guess um that and then the rest of its reprints there's but do but do reggie gigas and the evs and then i think literally the rest of the set is reprints oh and you know minorly festival lead got another card because sea king got printed sure united wings or whatever right that was shrouded fables yeah that was shrouded fable was when the dark yeah anyway literally the rest or there's a couple was there were there new a specs in this one oh yeah but they were terrible yeah it was pokey vital a and or no that was uh that was shrouded fable that was shrouded fables this was max max rod and treasure tracker can you tell me what does john can i uh no yeah it lets you search your deck for tool well because i'm looking at the card i know what it does yeah but okay unless you search your deck for five tools and put them in your head the terrible card um but we did get badoo we got a miracle headset my bad what an impactful card no that was surging sparks oh yeah what are we talking about terrible that's what i'm saying so you have black belts training badoo reggie gigas and the evs and at the time the evs were not widely played because the decks that they were good into or they were not good into enough decks yet because rotation had not yet occurred so i guess at the time it was printed but do did i feel like but do really does it does a lot of heavy lifting for this set really early hb bud pokemon's definitely carrying here i mean i still think it's c tier um yeah i think i don't know like other than badoo what are you talking about realistically well you had the reggie gigas It's for from Lugia you had That's it. That's it. It's those two cards Because the Evie's weren't definitely not impactful on release No, they were not ready until a lot of the bottom of B if you can't I mean the dude carries it but I don't think it's Enough to get it out of the middle. We'll put it down here. That's fine So next up puts us at journey together Which would be All of the owners Pokemon, obviously, we finally got Blaziken Even though it didn't see play when it came out So big things are Clefairy And Zoroark the hops archetype And Brock scouting was also a card that came out here. Sure But really all things consider that's yeah, it had so much potential and had so much hype It was like Oh ends Pokemon are coming back. It's ends. Cool. We all of it, you know I mean, we don't have a whole lot of you know Hindsight at this point. It's the third newest set But yeah, this whole format was the dragapult and guard of our show. Yeah, it didn't feel like it changed anything I mean we had a like Zoroark made some runs. It's not like it's not like it's not like it's not made some runs in some tournaments and I'm struggling like Lily's Clefairy. Obviously it was a huge card But I don't think it's as impactful even as Bidoo was like if we're gonna go talk about you know, sure that kind of thing I feel like it does it go somewhere like here? Yeah, it's I think that lowest rated I mean stellar crown and this definitely feel like they're kind on that same level where there's a lot of hype coming Journey was better than prismatic or is but do enough to put it above that I think but do's been more of an impact Journey together. Yeah, honestly like it's been played in more decks. It's been played in more top codes It's been played in more tournaments consistently since it unprinted Like Hobbes doesn't do anything and Zoroark kind of shows up once in a while, but it's never been like a dominant deck It's more like a fringe deck and then everything else other than Lily's Clefairy like but that's a tech car realistically, it's not Needed to be played in everything, you know that's the flexibility but do carries that and then a lot of these other things too, but Yeah, I don't know. I don't I don't like Lily's Clefairy like it's You know still like Guardian would still be okay if they had to play against Dragapult without Clefairy. Yeah, I think yeah I think they would you know, we saw it it saw play before the set came out So, why would it not continue to do it without it afterward it's one of those things where I think a lot of stuff This is this marks an interesting point where you can tell this is the shift at the end of the block where they're trying to like De-escalate things a little bit or these cards are waiting for a lot of the other power cards Actually, that's an interesting thought because this is one of the first sets post a specs So at some point this would be the beginning of a block where a specs no longer exists in the standard format and I think that that will temper or Relatively raise the power level of these cards When you compare it to other things like a lot of these scarlet and violet sets earlier on were not as strong as the late You know brilliant stars V star era sets because the V stars still existed and those cards are so crazy By the time you got to the end of that format So as you got closer and closer to the end of the a spec era of the scarlet and violet format you either would have had to just leap further above that with these trainer sets or you have to bring the power level down and You know, it seems like they went with the latter because we were not releasing these high-impact a spec cards to supplement these archetypes I Think that's fair. Like realistically speaking. We don't know what it's gonna look like Two years from now when this sets at the end of its life We've got the benefit of how seeing how all these cards like, you know hops could be get it get a resurgence with When whenever we get that pink urchin man, it's gonna turn around sure That's Well, I don't know like yeah, it's hard to say like I wish that If they were teasing that they would print more owners Pokemon in the next set or something like that Then I'd feel a little bit more confident saying that this has some legs and will but like it's confined entirely Into itself. That's fair to where it doesn't have any real growth potential or splash ability Like you can't really splash hops into stuff you can't splash and so rock into stuff Well, I think you can splash ends or okay stuff. That's Yeah, you could I mean we saw Stefan Ivan off play exactly list with exactly, you know, but even that like Takes a lot of ingenuity and engineering it's not intuitive like some of these other ones are sure Well with that in mind, how do you feel about the next owner set and see or seemingly the last owner set in destined rivals Again, I don't I don't love it. I mean, it's it's a cool set like there's a lot of cool cards Rockets are cool. But like the archetype sucks like Didn't do anything man. Like it really fell flat on his face. Like I kind of felt okay about it going into NAIC and then yeah, it did absolutely nothing. I mean, what did we really we gained Grimmsnarl is what yeah Heavily carrying this set that the other stuff you have you have Ethan's ho-oh for like the armor Rouge box but you know you have Grimmsnarl as a high tier deck and then you have a bunch of mid and low tier decks with Ethan's typhlosion or ho-oh armor Rouge or team Rockets box Jan mega box Shaman is a good card, you know that came out as well. But for the most part it's a lot of at best B or C tier decks and then you have Grimmsnarl kind of booing everything from its place on high Actually Cynthia's Garchomp is relatively decent as well But that's still probably in like the B tier category at the end of the day. Yeah, I think it's okay like I don't think it I mean it'll get a little bit more with the fighting away or whatever the The plus power thing the electric power for fighting types. Sure, but it'll be I Don't know if that'll ever like dominate the meta or anything like that. No, but even like right before that so For the NAIC when it came out Marnie's Grimmsnarl was definitely like a big presence at NAIC But outside of that, you know Not a whole lot to see in my opinion Not a lot of trainers that really shook anything up Because it was so focused on Rockets like most of the trainers were rocket centric. Sure stuff So if we circle back to obsidian flames a set that had two card three cards if you add Cleffa They carried the arca and it was basically a self-contained archetype at the time of release and its impact on the meta How does that compare to Grimmsnarls impact on its release? Even if we discount even if we discount Garchomp and then the other kind of fringe archetypes entirely Hmm it makes me want to move prismatic up Okay Then put Death's Unravels in C tier or bottom of B tier like I Know you like Marnie's Grimmsnarl. I really do And it had good runs from a couple good players But I don't think it was the dominating deck that people predicted it was gonna be going in NAIC I Think it's still like it can be inconsistent at times. It can still Do a lot of good stuff but I Don't know man, like I Think beats here's where I'd end up with it. Like I do you feel differently than B tier? No, I think that you're the argument is sound again The set doesn't have a specs in it. A lot of these cards are a million percent unfortunately parasitic archetypes because their support is entirely contained within this and they are waiting for Rotation to you know, read the format of some of these other power cards to hopefully see the light of day at some point So you said you want to put it up here at the bottom of this? Or do you put it wanted to put it at the top of this one? I'd probably put it on beat the bottom of B tier Okay, cuz what I'm thinking is like, okay a tier or s tier is like Defining the whole game for a long time B or a is like Meta warping the whole format changes around these sets B would be like they introduced one or two archetypes that really revolutionized the game C is they have a couple good cards. Maybe that see play D is They have one card if that that sees play and then F is no cards, right? Sure, so that's kind of like my thought process and B would fit it would fit into B. Okay I mean you can move prismatic down at this point I guess maybe because it has the one that's kind of what my thought was like with C tier It's like one card that defines the format but like nothing else if that but yeah, I think I Don't know. That's that. What do you know that I said that I'll let you react I guess No, I mean, I'm pretty happy with it where everything's sitting right now And then I'll get to the final one after this. Oh good Yeah, so with with that in mind with this rubric that you've established for us now this nice now that we've come to the last thing in the tier list This clear identity I guess it's hot take time. How good is this set? Four days after it hit shelves Yeah a little early So forgive us if it doesn't hold up, you know what I'm saying? But I don't think this is a tier set I'd probably put it in I mean, we've seen a lot of these go into B tier and I think that makes sense, right? like it's hard to have every set be a or s like that just feels cheesy and Ridiculous at the end of the day. I probably put it in B or C. Like I mean you have Genesect you have Some good supporters right like you have What is the thing called that lets you get the Pokemon and energy I mean, okay Hilda's not bad Like you said Zekrom exists Zekrom is good. Yeah Like this is still gonna be the goldango grim snarl guard of or dragapult show With some Charizard sprinkled in there and I think a lot of the other stuff is just gonna kind of fall by the wayside So I'm a right on might get more play and like move up from a C tier to a B tier deck, but maybe Yeah, maybe I think that's a strong maybe I Mean outside of the Genesect. I'm struggling to find and Genesect an air balloon and then I struggled Super heavily impactful cards beyond that, you know Something like Hilda versus Iona or Hilda versus boss or You know Hilda versus even Jacques, you know, it's true Not that much better than Jacques and in some instances is even worse than Jacques is and it also doesn't have things like nest ball Ultra ball guard of our EX backing it up now granted That's not really a super fair comparison because that is one of the best sets that we have listed up here But I think that as you go down like it's not an a spec set Unfortunately, it's also split into two different sets. So then, you know if I could rank these independently I actually think that they may end up in different tiers Yeah, that would be interesting to see like the set with guard of war or with Genesect in it black bolt Might go higher than white flare if you will Oh for sure, like white flares got jealous and and Hilda I think and I'm not sure if there's anything else in there. Oh And one of whichever one like prism energy is definitely a pretty big deal, too Yeah, that's fair. But if we keep them together, I guess we just have to assign both of them to a single tier yeah, I think I mean C's fair like but I mean It's still early to say it could go to be Though I think it's better than like journey together Probably it's definitely better than stellar crowd Yeah Yeah, I think journey together had more Like the ends deck saw a lot of play at least Like it was a meta relevant deck and there's no meta relevant deck running out of black bolt and white flare. There's cards that it introduces like, you know, they're like unlike prismatic evolutions, but do Revolutionize the format like you had to play differently after this came out. I don't think you have to play Super like, you know air balloon coming out definitely changes how decks like Interact and like the switching amount and penny amount and turbo amount might change sure But I don't think like the game is slowing down or changing because black bolt and white flare came out. So no, no, no And all this being said, I actually it almost makes me want to go back I think one of these sets kind of looks out of place to me and that's surging sparks And I'm trying to remember what yeah, I did I think it might be too high Yeah, because like you said think it didn't it introduced cards that Did change archetypes like my right on was built differently My Lottie house is definitely a good card and it's all playing a variety of archetypes But again supporting card, it's not a new archetype You know Alolan executor fits a similar bill to something like Genesect where it's a supporting card that goes into a single deck and Like you said that the same thing for precious trolley energy search Pro this Printer surging sparks might be a C tier set Yeah, and it can be one or it just introduces cards to archetypes and I think it's Probably higher than black bolt in the white flare. I forgot still a crown also area zero underdeaths yeah I mean but yeah so it's awesome you know important that's a that's a really powerful stadium for sure it is it is and you know sparkling crystal is in this set too and that did see play but yeah I don't know it's still yeah definitely stellar crown feels so forgettable to me yeah that's fair to say yeah I feel like that's that's a good wrap like looking at it like yeah we go through era defining sets that's what top two for sure and then you know format warping multiple cards and decks coming from it these solid archetypes coming from it or format warping but not nearly as you know crazy as a tear and then you get a couple good cards and then like maybe one good card and D and then nothing impactful don't save your money you know oh yeah it seems fair to me yeah I've said Ian looking at it might be a little higher but I don't know if I'd put it any lower I think Pidgeot and jars are it alone really carry and like Clefa I think it's interesting like what I spend money on obsidian no but like it has some really powerful singles you yeah for sure yeah it's so fun it's literally outside of Pidgeot Charizard Clefa you do not want to open a single card out of this and because it's all comprised of those terrible terrible themed deck cards and I think that's the other problem with journey together to honestly is that outside of there's a lot of his junk that got thrown in there yeah I'm not a fan of Pokemon doing that like no but unfortunately those cards have to get released at some point or and they've refused to put us on the same release cycle as what Japan gets so we don't get these standalone products and they've almost made a foray into it with like the Steven and Marnie decks but then they still just threw those into destined rivals anyway yeah yeah that was weird I mean I don't know I feel about it like yeah it doesn't change really too much about me playing the game we're collecting so no it doesn't but this is a pretty fun exercise so just to rattle this off real quick for audio only listeners we have we have our top tier or era defining sets for the Scarlet and Violet era as Twilight Masquerade and the Scarlet and Violet base set our a tier sets which we you know we define that as they've released new archetypes into the wild were Paradox Rift, Shrouded Fable, and Temporal Forces. The next list of sets had solid format cards or maybe even in some instances format warping cards and those were Obsidian Flames, Paldeia Evolved, Prismatic Evolutions, and Destined Rivals. The next four sets exist and those are Journey Together, Surging Sparks, Black Bolt, White Flare, and Stellar Crown. Pokemon 151 is in its own tier because it has Mew and Paldeian Fates is a set that you should not buy. Now at some point I'm sure Paldeian Fates is gonna be one of those uber crazy collector sets but outside of that if you were looking at it from a competitive perspective you should not crack a single pack of that set unless you really like that you know super villain paladin that you can get that like IR where he's like underwater and he looks you know menacing. Bad card but really cool artwork. This is a really fun exercise John I think this is a kind of cool way to you know it doesn't really close out the Scarlet Violet era because we still play with all of these cards for quite a while but now that these have kind of all been released as a package I think it's a neat thing to look back on and we actually have the ability now to build decks you know if you wanted to do a block format Scarlet and Violet only sort of situation I mean I guess it sounds like it would just be a lot of Dragapult and Gardevoir unfortunately but you know are there other things that you could do with that as well and you know now we have the ability to answer that question. Yeah we're almost at the point yeah this world's format will be solely Scarlet and Violet which is kind of cool it'll be a standalone format for that so I mean you know time will tell if this is gonna be remembered as one of the best formats we've ever played. Just to give you guys an idea of how insane the collector's market is for Paldane Fates didn't ever get released as a booster box but you can buy it as an elite trainer box. Here real quick Aaron how much do you think of Paldane's Fate elite trainer box just the regular one not the Pokemon Center one costs right now? I know they're up there because people were buying them at NAIC with the express intent to resell them but you said the non Pokemon Center one I'm gonna guess like 250s right now. Okay so it's yeah 215 is where it's like right around right now. Okay yeah I mean that doesn't surprise me that's like you know it's a sealed product the value typically goes up with time for the life of me I can't imagine storing a bunch of unopened ETBs in my house though that sounds awful. I mean yes more power to you. I mean it has been more popular to collect the and then Paldane Fates does have the special illustration where Charizard from you know that sure looks pretty cool I guess but and the Bubble Mew came from this set right? Yes it did. Those two those two are some of the most sought-after cards so I guess there's some of that driving inflation. Do you have a Bubble Mew Aaron? I do not and I at this point I will not because I am not paying the price tag. I got into I got into mine for like a hundred bucks back when I got it so that was nice but that'll be one I like the Usman or whatever how do we pronounce the last name the artists name is very cool looking art style but anyways yeah that's enough rambling about crazy and prices on Pokemon and I hope that tier list made sense and if you have a hot take let us know you know if you don't agree with it hey we're open for discussion we definitely want to hear from you if you think you know Paldane Fates is your favorite set and we should just buy more of it forever let us know you know you know that Bubble Mew is definitely a cool card so I won't argue to otherwise but anyways I'm curious to you it'll be interesting to see where we go the next couple weeks as a podcast it's been kind of a slow couple weeks you know we had a Pokemon Direct but I don't expect a whole lot of news you know coming into worlds yeah we got about three weeks to worlds at this point right so we'll definitely both be prepping I'll be you know playing a lot of the new format and then reading up on rulings and learning all my judge stuff I guess for the format and then yeah I'm sure you'll start playtesting more and more as we get closer I'm trying I'm trying yeah are you in a testing group right now or are you just kind of doing stuff on your own I am mostly winging it and then just discussing things with people but I have not actually like coordinated times to actually playtest with anybody in particular gotcha is Santi gone or no no he's not so it'll just be you from kind of the local area I guess yeah all right fair enough well I'll definitely be interested to see how it progresses and you'll definitely hear about it from us as we journey along the battle frontier yep so thank you for listening like John said if you have any you know if you disagree with us or you would just want to give us your opinion on the tier list let us know in the comments of the episode and you will find links to all of our socials if you want to get more connected more engaged and we appreciate listening to the end that being said we will see you guys next week have a nice week