Hi, my name is Leon Rowe, currency trader and trading coach at Trading180.com and welcome to this week's supply and demand for us and gold fundamental and technical analysis for the week ahead, starting the 3rd of March. I hope you had a great trading week and if you find the videos that I provide every Sunday of use, please don't forget to like, subscribe and share the video content across all platforms if you can. It's a free way to support the channel and shows your appreciation. So getting into the week ahead and this is from Trading Economics and so in the upcoming week, investors will closely track the United States' January label report and speeches by several Federal Reserve officials including Fed Chair Powell's semi-annual monetary policy reports to Congress. Also key US indicators like the ISM Services PMI, Jolt's job openings, factory orders and foreign trade data will be under scrutiny. Internationally, the focus will be on the European Central Bank and the Bank of Canada interest rate decisions. That will be definitely important. Both banks are actually expected to hold rates, but it's really about the forthcoming cuts and when they are likely to happen. So the market will get clues as to what the central bankers are thinking. So where are we at now? Sorry, we've got interest rate decisions alongside inflation rates in Switzerland. GDP growth rates for Australia will also be monitored. Finally, trade data for major exporters such as Germany, Australia, China and Canada will be closely watched along with services PMI for China. So fairly a lot going on this week especially in the United States and yeah another busy week. So beginning of the month. Now before we get into the weekly analysis, just I guess I've got some trade analysis on the Euro Australian dollar and this was a trade that I'd entered into this week and if you are in the member's area, you'll be able to see the analysis in the trading videos area. And if you click on the 28th of February, our group call that we have every Wednesday live group call via zoom. And if you go to about the one minute nine mark, you'll see that this was the Euro Australian dollar. And I was talking about the potential for a stop hunt in this video. So you can see the breakdown of the actual trade setup if you remember there but in this video what I am going to do is just really kind of go over the main the main entry in terms of you know where I got in and how the trade has played out so far. So stop hunt did actually work out quite nice. I didn't enter on the hourly timeframe but just for ease of understanding I guess it's better that I go down to the hourly. So I was expecting a stop hunt to happen above this level which it did happen now. What I ended up doing was as soon as around about nine o'clock, this is a this morning, but on Thursday morning, I entered into three positions or managed to get into three positions. So one was actually at the 1.6648 level. Then I set two pending orders one at the 1.6671 and then another one at the 1.6692 area. So right at these highs and the the hope is that obviously prices either go in my direction or I can get a better price if prices do end up pulling back and nobody knows how far they're going to pull back to. And then I'm looking at getting hopefully taking some positions off as prices go in my favor. The stop losses on each trade are all at the same position right right there. And so on each position what I'm looking for the first two positions I'm looking for at least a one to one to get myself to at least some sort of break even overall or at least a profitable position. Then what I'll do is I'll swing trade this last position. So as we go forward you can see prices you know obviously work were coming up and so triggered me into the 50% pending order and also as well managed to trigger my final position 50%. Now at this point in time it does feel I'm used to it now but it can feel uncomfortable because you know you're thinking to yourself what prices are going against me. The thing with the fundamental analysis and applying fundamental analysis is understanding that if you're right about this trade and this is actually a bargain price which I thought it was I wanted to be a buyer of the Australian dollar over the over the euro and that was also as well if you got access to the fundamental analysis spreadsheet and you remember you'll note that I was short I had a short bias on the euro Australian dollar and that never changed as well and that again was broken down in the members video area and if you're right about the fundamentals if I'm right about the fundamentals prices even though they might pull back they may not want to go too far above this area so that's the reason why I try to enter into three positions if price would obviously allow that to happen and as you can see prices did get me into three positions now at this point I'm trying to take off at least a one-to-one on this on this third position which ended up happening so as it came down as it came down it basically my stock loss sorry my take profit was was was around here at the one six six four three so that position ended up being a winner and then now I'm looking for at least a one-to-one on this second position yeah so it didn't quite happen there and then it happened right there so that was the second position at a one to one so now I am profitable actually I was profitable before that because I tend to go a bit heavier and increase my position size as prices go against me so now I'm actually profitable and so it's now about just swing trading this position this euro Australian position and again really from a fundamental perspective the reason why I'm looking to buy the Australian dollar over the euro over the euro is because the RBA the Reserve Bank of Australia are looking to cut rates later than the in the European Central Bank so that really should give it a bit of an advantage at certain levels and so I was right this week on this trade and so far now this is going to be a trade that I will look to swing trade looking at daily targets of course and trying to maybe get you know prices to kind of maybe come down a bit further around here pull that out yep so prices to maybe come down to somewhere around these lows if not slightly lower I'll just trail my stop on that one so nice trade on that so far also I'm in the New Zealand dollar US dollar long I won't necessarily break that down this week but I have broken that down also as well in the members area video and the second of March weekly fundamental and technical analysis video for the members I break down the trades that I'm in also as well and just to give a bit of a trade update as well from last week on the CAD yen so again this was from last week so you can watch last week's breakdown and and see what this whole scenario was again another stop on situation I go down into the lower time frames and again same principle in the same approach I entered into the market order here and I entered into another trade at the 50% and also one at the 95% now the 95% trade ended up being profitable last week and you can again go and see that in last week's Sunday video analysis so it reached as we got triggered in here prices came down and then I was only in really two positions which was the market order and the and the actual 50% retracement right and then this week we had price again come down and hit a nice one-to-one trade which was here right and that was on the the Thursday you know I was asleep then so it was nice to wake up to some profit there on this trade in fact that wasn't where the one-to-one was it was right there so that would have been in the pullback entry sell and then about a week later yeah Wednesday and then to Wednesday took about a week to get there but ended up taking profit off there and now I'm just in this trade which is the original market order around the one 1098 and again looking for higher timeframe targets on this one and hopefully again I can swing trade this down with the fact that the Bank of Japan are going to be the only central bank this year to high crates and so from a from a currency evaluation perspective the yen hopefully should want to you know fall away in it and and appreciate over the Canadian dollar so that's really where I am with the cad yen and also as well the Euro Aussie so both profitable trades running and also as well have a couple of other trades that I got into last week but I might go over those next week regardless of whether they win or lose I'll go over at least one of them and so yeah that's really it for the trade analysis so let's get into the week ahead and the week ahead starting off on the dollar index and the dollar index is a equally weighted dollar index with a calculation if you want to know this calculation then if you go to the YouTube channel you scroll to the trading one at YouTube channel and then go to Forex strategy using equally weighted index to identify the best Forex setups and pairs there's the calculation on how to add that to your trading view charts and so this week for the dollar I was just telling the members that I've been bullish pretty much since the beginning of the year I had some decent dollar trades but now I think that the dollar may start to I guess start to sorry yeah start to maybe sell off a little bit I think the really really the main reason is because I think whatever's priced into the market in terms of rate hikes has been and rate cuts sorry has been priced in and so in order for really prices to go much higher beyond this level and of course prices can go higher but for prices to really continue you know on its upward movement what would have to happen is for really you know signs of inflation going higher as well as the economy growing now from Jerome Powell's perspective he is being quite hawkish so it says here's the feds pal doubled down on no rush to cut message so you know set pieces include Fed testimony China Congress and UK budget ECB and Bank of Canada may keep interest rates unchanged and so it says here the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell is expected to double down on his message that there is no rush to cut interest rates especially after fresh inflation data showed that price pressures persist so they need to get inflation down really to look to potentially cut rates and it says here Powell is headed to Capitol Hill where he deliver his semi-annual monetary policy testimony to a house committee on Wednesday and the Senate panel on Thursday the US central bank chief and nearly all of his colleagues have said in recent weeks that they can afford to be patient in deciding when to cut rates given the underlying strength in the economy the danger of moving too soon in cutting is that the job is not quite done and that the really good readings we've had for the last six months somehow turn out to be or not to be true or a true indicator of where inflation is heading Powell said in an interview with CBS 60 minutes on February the 5th earlier in the month so earlier last month and it says that cautious approach has been vindicated or validated in recent weeks by data showing inflation picked up last month but it's not likely to satisfy Democrats who are anxious about the path of rates could affect the November presidential election and down ballot races they're expected to to press the Fed chief and why officials are keeping borrowing costs so high risking damage to the economy when they've made so much progress on inflation and in fact earlier in the year I was saying I think one of one of the first videos I made this year was on the fact that the Federal Reserve are likely to cut rates this year and it's really to do with the election cycle and so you know politicians may put in pressure on the Fed to actually cut rates so cut rate rate cuts are coming so but at the moment the CME Fed watch tool the probability of that rate cut is priced in June so you'll see here it says May top top left in May's announcement there's still 81% of a no change in June is when you start to see the probability of an ease to 63.3% and as that starts to increase what you'll start to see is the dollar look to devalue right and so I do think that although the dollar isn't an all-out sell here I do think that the upside is likely limited and so I am now looking for the potential for some short trades I do think that the dollar is a bit expensive in this area so I'm thinking that prices are likely to potentially pull back not too sure if it would do it this week hopefully it does of course but if it does then I will be a bit happier with that anyway but overall I think the dollar should want to pull back to some degree or at least at the very least the upside upside potential is likely to be to be capped one of the other data points that came out this week was that the US manufacturing gauge drops as industry struggles for momentum so ISM factory index declined 1.3 points in February and new orders productions and employment measures decreased so a measure of US factory activity shrank at a faster pace in February as orders production and employment contracted suggesting manufacturing is struggling for momentum so it says here the latest figures are a setback for the nation's purchasing and supply and management executives who have been optimistic that the US manufacturing is on the cusp of expanding after being stuck in contraction territory since late 2022 so if we look at the you know the manufacturing which is a forward-looking indicator as well of how the economy is doing right and so again if GDP you know manufacturing is a component of GDP and if manufacturing struggling then it hurts you know the GDP reading right and so I do think that potentially the tide is turning in terms of dollar strength now obviously the most difficult thing is the timing but overall looking at where we are I do think that if prices do go higher it shouldn't be much higher and I do think that the path now release resistance is probably to the downside as we start to now auction between a high and a low and traders will say well what is an auction really just an auction is another word for it would be to kind of range between this high and this low potentially or maybe slightly higher in terms of that high and this low so this is where I do think that the dollar is likely to want to stay between in terms of where prices are likely to stay between so for me I think the dollar is a bit on the expensive side opportunity to short of course if Fed chair power comes out and is very hawkish then you may see a bit more upside but overall I think in the next month or two as we head closer to June I do think that the dollars strength is likely to to wane a little bit but it's not necessarily an all-out sell I think you can also buy on the dips as well if you do believe that the dollar is a bargain at certain demand zones and also as well not to forget that the data needs to support the narrative so if the data does support later break hikes meaning that you know data comes out and all of a sudden the Fed start to you know maybe plan for a July cut rather than a June cut then in fact you will have a stronger dollar overall but it also depends and I could be you know work the other way right in terms of if data comes out and doesn't support rate cuts in June in fact it maybe brings it forward to May then you're likely to see the dollar actually sell off a lot a lot more so data is still important data dependent and let's see what happens with the dollar but I think you know in the coming weeks I think that the upside is capped for the dollar in terms of any kind of dollar strength looking at the dollar dollar yen the dollar yen this week we did come up to this supply zone right here where we've got that area and we have reacted prices haven't necessarily you know move to the upside this week we did also have I guess a rumor really start to circulate that the Bank of Japan could potentially start to hike rates for the first time since I think 2007 in March so it's expected to really happen you know March April maybe latest in June and it says here the headline is the Bank of Japan risks roiling markets with traders underprepared for March so 7 of 15 economists see a March policy shift as possible and swaps point to 34 percent chance of hike by March and 85 percent by April so the you know the closer we get to March April and the more likely it looks like the the Bank of Japan are gonna hike rates then you should really start to have prices move to the downside although of course in the short-term prices could move you know higher and you know clear out some of the some of the liquidity especially above that area as well that's gonna be a very nice level where you know above that 152 where there's gonna be a lot of liquidity above there but overall the closer we get to rate hikes is the hopefully the stronger the Japanese yen should become so this pair is not necessarily one that I am very bullish on but I think once the divergence starts to play out in terms of in terms of the dollar cutting rates and the Fed cutting rates and the Bank of Japan hiking rates then what should happen is you should really get a situation where the dollar yen starts to drop and fall towards at least a 140 so you can prepare yourself for that which I am but not just yet and I think it's happening just just just yet so let's see what happens there dollar CAD and dollar CAD this week you have a nice supply zone that has been tested the dollar CAD is necessarily a pair that I'm interested in buying or trading at the moment that's a nice area of demand wide area of demand that I do think that within that wide area of demand if I'm looking for any kind of trades it'll be in you'd have to have the confluence of some sort of support and resistance I do think that area is decent you've probably got some intraday support in there as well so if you are looking for buy trades looking for pullbacks if you're looking for a trade right now then that's decent for a sell trade in terms of buying the Canadian dollar but ultimately not really interested in taking this pair but if you are a decent area to look for some short trades currently looking at the pound dollar and the pound dollar has been really within this this whole range or auction for actually quite a while so two strong currencies and I think I do think that the British pound does have a bit of an edge again the main reason for the edge is that the Bank of England are looking to cut later than the Federal Reserve so it says here cuts to interest rates still some way off says Bank of England economist and so the Bank of England top economist has said he believes a cut to UK interest rates are still some way off Hugh Pyl the Chief Economist at the Central Bank also warned that the economy is currently weak and said policymakers should not feel a false sense of security if inflation falls below the 2% target rate in the coming months it says here economists and banks have widely predicted that the Bank of England's monetary policy committee could opt for its first cut since the start of COVID-19 pandemic at the first in the first half of the year however Mr. Pyl became the latest Bank of England rates setter to appear cautious about potential future rate cuts in my baseline scenario the time for cutting rate bank rate remains some way off and he says I need to see more compelling evidence that the underlying persistent component of CPI consumer prices index inflation is being squeezed down to rates consistent with the lasting and sustainable achievement of 2% inflation target before voting to lower bank rates so until that starts to happen he's going to be quite hawkish and so you know the the market I think is pricing in rate cuts for August so whereas you will have maybe the the market pricing in a rate cut in June and a rate sorry a rate yeah rate cut in June and a rate cut in in August the the central bank that is cutting later is typically the one that you want to buy so from that perspective yeah the the pound on pullbacks is likely to be or should be really the buy if you're trading the interest rate leading and lagging trade ideas any pullbacks there and again looking at from a demand zone perspective yeah probably back it back down into into that zone right there in fact probably down into there if you are looking at buying the dollar over the pound then you are looking at any moves back up to that supply zone there before looking at getting short pound yen and the pound yen I think now is looking decent for a potential sell not necessarily the best supply zone in the in the world but with the Bank of Japan really the only bank looking at hiking rates then the yen should really be the the buy out of the two so I do think that any pullbacks now into this zone again like I said not necessarily the best supply zone reason being because we haven't taken out any kind of demand yet but any pullbacks into that area should be nice for a potential sell or if you're looking for stoppons just above that if you are still looking to buy the the pound then probably from now or maybe a bit of a deeper pullback into that zone and for extra confluence you might want to wait for an area where you have support and resistance within that area of demand as well looking at the euro dollar so the euro dollar this week I think the euro is strengthening really just based off of some a bit of dollar weakness and so because of the recent ISM data I think you did have a move to the upside whether that's going to be sustained or not is is a tough one I mean I've my bias is really to kind of is to kind of still short the euro I'm not really keen on buying a euro at all but the euro could be a buy against the dollar on a pullback if you start to see more dollar weakness so that's a decent also as well if you are being if you do want to be a buyer of the euro I think anywhere in and around this this support resistance and just below that area there is nice technically if you are looking to buy the dollar over the euro then I would probably wait for something around the 109s 109 20s before looking at getting shorts and you do also have a decent area of support resistance on that daily time frame in and around there so where prices have been traded quite significantly so that adds to again some sort of confluence if you are looking for short trades on the dollar my bias would still be although again I'm thinking that obviously the dollar can be a buy and a sell against the the euro I still think the dollar is likely to be a buy but this week is going to definitely be a pivotal week looking at the euro euro yen and the euro yen I was in this last week as well actually got stopped out by about two or three pips but managed to re-enter on an intraday stop hunt and get some of that money back so still a little bit down on this on this overall trade idea but let's see how this plays out I'm in one position on this so but from a supply and demand perspective again it's really just understanding that I want to be a buyer of the yen at the moment and I think the euro could again strengthen in the short term I think overall the yen should really be the buy in terms of this should be really be a short on this currency pair but let's see what happens here if my other position I've made some money on one position only managed to get in on two positions and if the one I'm swing trading at the moment gets stopped out then I'll just wait for another opportunity to get in short on this because I do think that the euro yen should want to roll over hopefully and let's see what happens there if you do want to be a buyer though if you don't want to be a buyer on this and buy the euro against the yen then you've got an area of demand in and around here which is decent and also as well you've got some decent confluence when it comes to a level that has been traded support and resistance within that demand zone so quite nice there quite nice technically euro pound euro pound is a trade that I really want to get short on but haven't had the opportunity to so let's see what happens this week some supply zones I'm looking for pullback we've got again a decent level of support there and resistance so yeah I do think I want to be a buyer of the pound over the euro so any pullbacks that go higher that's where I want to be a get short and buy the the British pound or even better would be somewhere around this level so let's see what happens there I think also as well this level is open to a bit of a stop hunt around that 0.858 level so again I'm just got my eye on this for sure if you're looking at buy trades though looking at buy trades and buying the euro then really a pullback into that demand zone down at the bottom would be really the best opportunity I think as well that is kind of backed up by the fact that you've got this right term is capture pain relief trade right that area just below the level is a known as a CPR trade setup so quite nice technically but fundamentally you really want to be buying the more I can't tell you what to do but I want to be buying the other British pounds so that's where my bias is on this pair Aussie dollar Aussie dollar you do have some supply now I think the Australian dollar is a buy overall and I'm watching this trade I'm watching this pair simply just to look for some buy trades I'm not totally convinced just yet that the Australian dollar is a buy against the the US dollar but I do have my my eye on this pair and so again any pullbacks if you're looking to buy the Australian dollar and if you're looking for sell trades you're probably looking for pullback around here yes any pullbacks up into maybe the highs of this area even a bit higher where you've got a fresher area of supply around this 0.66 round number and just above that it's going to be nice technically for a short trade if it does happen this week but I think if there's going to be some dollar weakness this week then you know prices should want to move to the upside but let's see what happens also as well prices does they do break through that area there then you do have a decent area of demand at these lows so I think if it comes down here that should be a decent pullback for a potential buy and looking at gold gold flew on Friday and that was really kind of due to again the US data so gold rises to nine week high as US data reinforces rate cut bets and so manufacturing gauge drops as in industry struggles for momentum and bullying is on track for second consecutive weekly gain and so gold rose to the highest in nine weeks as disappointing US factory data and a drop in consumer sentiment reinforced bets on the possibility of interest rate cuts later this year signs of a softening economy solidified expectations that the Federal Reserve will need to lower borrowing costs to help shore up the economy higher rates are typically negative for non-yielding bullions so you know when you look at a price chart and I've mentioned this several times but whenever you see a price of gold and you see yields bond yields go in higher typically that has a negative effect on gold main reason is because money tends to float into assets that provide a yield right so gold holding gold doesn't provide a yield you want some easy money right and so I rather get paid you know four percent for holding government bonds is a mentality not necessarily personally but you know certain financial institutions tend to hold want to hold bond yields and get paid a yield rather than holding gold and waiting for just the price to appreciate so from that perspective gold kind of has struggled a bit but you can see it's making this way higher as you know the expectation of slowdown in the economy in the US economy starts to come to fruition if that does then obviously gold should be the buy as we head into the economic recession cycle or part of the cycle so we've got some demand zones around here here and right there as well if you do want to be a buyer of gold really looking for pullbacks if you're looking to be a seller of gold you do have quite a wide area of supply technical technically you do but from just looking at within that area and looking at levels really the levels you're looking for and a point of reference would be these two areas here I don't think you've got anything else to kind of refer and when I say refer as in you know support and resistances on the daily time frame chart is just looking at where institutions have done business right so they definitely thought that this was expensive for gold they thought it was expensive you know it spiked through where it was expensive again expensive again now will they think that gold is expensive here potentially potentially not who knows but if not then the next area to really kind of look for where price may be expensive is going to be all the way at these highs so as a point of reference looking at support and resistance you know it's either going to be here prices may reverse or prices may reverse around here if the market thinks that gold is expensive if you're looking to be a buyer though then you're looking at buys down into these demand zones potentially down at these lows so as the market and the US economy starts to call and potentially head into the contraction phase and potential recession phase you what should happen ultimately is actually gold should continue to go higher because we're then entering into the rate cutting cycle when in the rate cutting cycle of the rate cutting cycle where gold typically does do and appreciates so let's see what happens going forward over the next few months so that's it for this week I hope you enjoyed the content and found it useful hope you have a great trading week and speak to you soon have a blessed week all the best


All right, good morning everyone. I know that we've got some regrets this morning, but we'll check in and see who's here. Give it a few more minutes for everyone to come on in. Hey, good morning. This will be our TOCIG chairs meeting, and we'll give everyone a few minutes to come on in. All right, seeing lots of folks online. I think we can probably go ahead and get started. We have Liz on regrets to do so. I will be kicking us off here, our normal antitrust policy notice. Meeting minutes. You've all made it here, so excellent. I've got attendance on the back channel, so over in the public working duck and all as well. This is our TOCIG chairs meeting, so our comment today is really being able to review the sandbox proposal review, have a conversation about what's going on around how to handle existing proposals, kind of reviewing existing branding, talking about public comment period, and if we should change that. And the last piece is annual reviews are currently out there. So I'll be watching Chad if there's any questions in here, so we'll kick this off. I know there's been a lot of discussion around this, and I know that Liz is leading a lot of this, but I'd like to be able to hear from other folks around the sandbox proposal. I know there's been a lot of discussion, so open floor for the moment. I would really love to be able to hear from CIG chairs on this one as well. Hi, Amy. Hey. So one thing, one concern that I have, and I don't know if it's a problem, but just a concern is that the period of time between whenever you submit and when it will be reviewed, does that become longer? I mean, could it be months before you get reviewed? So that's my, that's my question. Maybe that's, you can ask her questions, but that was one question. No, actually, that definitely is a question in here. There is a comment in here about like TOC is reviewing spreadsheets quarterly, and I believe there is a proposal to be able to change that as well, just drop down through the rest of the slides. So like minimum two weeks comment, but probably not like the maximum of like two months in here. I'm not sure if anyone else has any other pieces around that particular. I'll move back over towards the sandbox proposal. Yes, go ahead and unmute. So, so I guess I had a general question in terms of the TOC's ability to, to implement the proposal as is. So, you know, if, if we're moving to, while I completely get the scenario that we want to, we want to reduce some of the overhead and maybe even reduce some of the bar for joining sandbox and, you know, streamline and simplify the marketing side of things, which have always been a bit of a challenge. Moving away from the sponsorship, which, you know, has been a challenge to get talk and user to get talk members to sponsor a project is probably something that needs to be fixed. However, getting all of the TOC to vote on the project kind of assumes that the entire TOC is going to be aware and do a little bit of research into the project. And I'm, and I'm wondering if this proposal puts an undue burden on the TOC since all the projects will move out of the SIGs and the TOC won't have the benefit of, you know, maybe even reviewing any presentations that might have happened in a SIG. I think that the discussion that we had was that they would be, there would be presentations linked on the form and we would review those and they would be nice if those were a SIG presentation, but they didn't have to be. So, so I think that, because I think a lot of people obviously would still really value reviewing a SIG presentation about a project, but it was not kind of strictly a requirement. But I mean, I certainly would intend to review all the presentations that were on the form. I think the other thing to, oh, sorry. Go on. I was just saying, I think the other thing that we're really aiming for here is to really systematize the input so that it's much easier for each TOC member to scan effectively a spreadsheet and sort of ensure that the MVP criteria have been met. And if they want to dig deeper, that's fine. But I think that the part of the goal is to ensure that people can vote with really only the MVP criteria from the form.  But given that the TOC is probably going to be voting on, you know, some of the, some of the more abstractive criteria that form part of the sandbox, like is it a good fit for the CNCF and, you know, how does it interact with other CNCF projects and other things like that? Then that's probably hard to do without digging a little bit deeper, because the MVP data in that form probably is just going to be a high level bit of information. I was just kind of making the point that, you know, absolutely systemizing and collecting that base level of information is fantastic. And that was kind of the basis of the templates that we had sort of created in the sandbox process that we had just agreed two months ago. So, you know, it's absolutely the right thing to do. I'm just wondering if we're kind of, you know, recreating the TOC bottleneck that we were looking to avoid when we were pushing some of those presentations to the stake in the first place. Yeah. I think you have a point, Alex. I, if you look at the comments on the proposal, I actually called out a couple of criteria there that I find are overly subjective and require sort of deep evaluation. Like one of them was, do we feel that this project is on a good trajectory? And I'm like, oh, that's at least 15, 20 minutes of argument right there per project. So hopefully we're not finished with that. The trajectory one is one that particular I have not seen answered. Because I do think that that brings up exactly the problem you're pointing out. And to add to this point, I think it's kind of just delaying the inevitable where you need to do some checks and give diligence anyway. And part of this can already be at that stage of letting people into sandbox. Of course, you can argue a lot about trajectory, but you can argue a lot less about, is this already in place at least on a baseline level? Like they just need to have a governance and that just needs to have certain provisions. And that's done. So you don't have to go as much about gut feeling on any trajectory. I have a question here, but governance is a higher level, not sandbox level requirement. So projects can come in without having a documented governance today. So to say they would need that as part of sandbox would be adding a criteria, right? Yes. Yeah, for good trajectory, I was thinking more stuff like contributions are increasing rather than nobody's actually written anything for this project for six months. I was assuming that was more of the concern. This is something that is very easy to validate the amount of contributions. I wouldn't be concerned about that point in particular. Well, isn't the CNCF staff going to do a light amount of due diligence as part of this process to look for those kinds of things? Yes. And that's part of what we can help kind of outline here, what level want to be able to actually go towards. And Josh's point of how do we define what a good trajectory is is kind of more where I think the conversation is. Yeah, although I think also we had a bit of a discussion of this in the TSE and we at some level decided we didn't necessarily, we weren't going to be super like the question was, do we only want to admit projects that we think are headed into incubation? And I think the statement that we said was we wanted to admit projects that were feasible, but not necessarily that we believed would get to incubation, right? So we wanted to sort of change the bar from being we believe that this project will get to incubation, meaning kind of we believe in it, we evaluated it versus like, well, it could get to incubation. There's nothing that blocks it from getting to incubation. It's a lower bar obviously, but it also sort of simplifies the criteria because it doesn't require as much analysis effectively and opinion. So there was a there was a strong effort to kind of try and divorce the opinion from the process to try and simplify this. And if you lower the bar and if you don't have any any any actual assessment as part of the process, isn't it even more hand wavy and basically subjective? Of course, you need some hard process. No, no, actually, I mean, I absolutely agree that there is hard. I mean, I just wrote I wrote the form or I wrote the draft form. And so there's things like, give us a link to your code of conduct, right? Like, that's that's a non negotiable. You don't have a link to a code of conduct, you don't get into sandbox, you know, things like that.  Things like that are absolutely non negotiable. But I think that the goal was basically to get it to a place where it really could, you know, I mean, in a spreadsheet form, you could scan through it in the space of an hour and vote on, you know, as many projects are as are asking that month, for example. Because the current process is too time consuming, frustrating for people. And I mean, on all sides. And also, we can appear from the outside to be sort of subjective. And so I think that we wanted to resolve, try and resolve all of those things. And also at the same time, sort of created different brand for sandbox so that so that admission into sandbox wasn't seen as such a high stakes thing at some level, right? Because I think there's a lot of swirling concerns around like, you know, sandbox isn't supposed to get marketing, but people say we're now part of the CNCF and it's been tricky. And so we wanted to kind of resolve that potential challenge as well. So that's an interesting segue to my next question, which was you know, for years since its existence, the CNCF is kind of very focused on creating this brand of these are curated projects. And we're making sure that there's a lot of deep diligence. And you know, there's been a lot of branding around that. And even if we, even if we, you know, if we reduce the bar and put more sandbox projects in, that's, that's great. But I, I don't think it's necessarily within the CNCF's purview to necessarily control how the marketing happens. I mean, we can make sure that we don't do things like, you know, give slots to sandbox projects to keynote addresses at KubeCon or something, right? And that's something that the CNCF can control. But I, I don't think that anything we can do or suggest is actually going to necessarily control how projects portray this to the, to the wider public, right? I mean, you know, they're going to be entitled to, to issue a statement of fact, which is we've been accepted as a sandbox project. Correct.  So no, I get it. And part of the reason to change the branding and obviously we'll have to wait and see, right? I mean, because like the, you know, the debate effectively, the two sides of the debate come down on, you could do a ton of due diligence early and, and really not have sandbox effectively or have sandbox be very restrictive. And for the reasons you suggest, or you can have a wide open and try and change the branding, right? And so we're going to change the CNCF sandbox branding to be more sort of informal in appearance. And if people want to put it on their website or whatever, they need to put CNCF sandbox, not just CNCF, you know, not just CNCF logo in the word sandbox. At least that was the proposal. So I totally get it. And I mean, we, I've been through this a few times in other contexts. It's very, very hard to do, right? It sort of provide a forum for collaboration and for vendor neutral intellectual property, while also sort of having it be meaningful. This is our latest iteration, I guess, and, and we'll keep adapting. Because it wasn't, you know, sort of was having challenges before too, having all the same challenges before. And then also people were kind of, you know, people were feeling overwhelmed with a number of things and people are feeling like their projects are getting listened to and things like that. And maybe the solution here is to have another project here. Whether that would be, I think in part what we're considering is the entrance and exit criteria at each of the tiers. Maybe four tiers is too much to hold in people's mind or maybe that doesn't help with the different designation. I guess in part I wonder if, and in part I start to wonder maybe about the value of the SIGs, if, if for in part not to try to help eliminate some time burden of project review. And if the sandbox is, I think, you know, to Alex's point that there is some implicit marketing that, that sort of happens with the affiliation. It can be made more crisp or kind of as is being proposed made more separate. But without that, is there, when you contrast to some, something like a working group inside of the SIG as a vendor neutral place to seed a project, what's the value of the sandbox in the face of something like that, I guess. Yeah, I feel like I'm monopolizing conversation. So if anybody else wants to speak, please let me know where there's a hand. Oh, you're doing great. I think while, since you have to see this call and others care a lot about the nuances of all of this and also put quite a bit of thought into the details, we kind of need to acknowledge it by and large, no one else cares. So either it's seen CF or it's not seen CF, like there is a certain distinction between the levels and such, obviously, but either it's within CNCF or it's not. And if even if you have like 10 levels, it doesn't matter. It is a CNCF project and that's already carries some branding. It carries some weight in that in and as of itself will be a goal for some people or some projects. You can't legalize this away. It's just impossible short of funding something else, which is below CNCF. Yeah, and we discussed that actually, we discussed sort of having an alternate like open collaboration federation or foundation or whatever. And what we basically decided was that even if you did it, everybody would just come try and join the CNCF anyway. And so he's like, it wouldn't actually do any good. And so we were like, well, we may as well try this. To be clear, I wasn't suggesting having a second one. You can maybe play games like having a silly name, for example, Playground was suggested back when the sandbox process was established to have a less serious name.  But beyond that, at some point, you just have to accept that being part of CNCF carries CNCF branding period. I also want to comment about what is the purpose of the SIG thing from a while back, because I really want to make sure that everybody knows that the SIGs actually really are quite valuable and play a role in the due diligence for incubating projects, as well as helping shape where we want to go and find projects. I think one of the things we're talking about here is there's a difference between projects coming to us and then also us going to projects. I think we want to make sure that we are curating the right projects into the CNCF, but at the same time, there's just this giant wave of projects that want to come try and join. So I don't want this to be seen at all as like a, hey, we don't appreciate or don't value what the SIGs are doing. So by design, especially in this group already means that you're basically having to have domain specific experts in that one area group, whatever. So that in and of itself is already a plus. So I do have a comment on the Sandbox project. I like the new style because Sandbox, you know, I've read the docs on it. It's for experiments and early stage projects. And a lot of that, you're not going to have things worked out and a lot of experiments do fail. And it's great to give people the space in a vendor neutral environment to do that. In fact, that's actually a good way to brand it as the CNCF. You can say, I'm CNCF on this project. We're vendor neutral. Come let's work together on solving this crazy experiment we're trying to work out. I like that. I mean, we talked about yeah, that's why we wanted to try and remove the thing about there wasn't necessarily a path to incubation to allow for failures that go off in different directions or do whatever afterwards. So that brings up another question on this, which is that it's always been policy that once a project is contributed to the CNCF, it never, there's no takebacks, you know, as in the project never gets spun off by the CNCF. Now, experimental has two senses. One is, you know, this project is an experiment. It might not be useful. It might not be possible, whatever. But there's also, it might actually be a good project isn't a good piece of technology, but not actually suitable for the CNCF for whatever reason. You know, doesn't work with other cloud native technologies, can't sort out governance issues, etc. I think if we're sort of widening the funnel for new sandbox projects coming in, we're going to get a lot more of the question of well fit for CNCF didn't work out for that project. What do we do now? I kind of feel like that needs to be addressed as a follow on to this proposal in that we have some method of spinning off projects that are viable as open source projects, but turn out not to be suitable for the CNCF from sandbox. I mean, the code is always there. The only thing you can't take back away from the next foundation is the brand name, which in that case may not be very valuable anyway. You know, changing the name of your project is a traumatic experience in a lot of cases. It can be a major obstacle in sort of development trajectory. We actually talked about this a little bit. Our understanding is that everything that matters in terms of naming and trademark is actually owned by the Linux Foundation as opposed to the CNCF. And so that actually does mean that if there's a better home in a different part of the Linux Foundation, or if we did find that we needed to create some other kind of foundation around it, that should be feasible legally with no renaming or anything like that. You know, also, I think we talked about, given that the contribution is the movement is one direction or it's actually a really good incentive to prevent abuse. I'm going to see if there's other comments that aren't coming from chat. Nope. Thanks. Mostly quiet in chat. Anyone else? Lee, I know that you've had some comments further in. Yeah, random thoughts. Yeah, I guess to Brendan's point, which is, I think, was probably self-evident, even unspoken, is that getting this, like, this is really hard, or like getting this right is really hard. Like, whether it was one level, whether it was just in or out, you know, that's another way of kind of addressing a part of this, or if it was five levels, that both of those, any which way you cut it, there can be pros and cons to the approach. Some of those pros and cons shift in their weight over time as the CNCF itself evolves and the project within them evolves. So I thought I would say that maybe alleviate a little bit of pressure on all of this. I guess from my part, I probably lean toward being a little fearful about whether or not we're achieving the desired outcome, whether or not we're like, hey, I consider that there are some of the entrance and exit criteria that do need to be refined and changed. I think for the most part, I was mentally on board with the criteria being going kind of the other way, being up-leveled, or the bar being slightly harder than it being removed. To the extent that it was slightly harder, that didn't necessarily detract from the work that the other projects that are in the sandbox today have done to get there. In some respects, the harder the bar, the more valued the title, the label, the association, if I can make a quick analogy to martial arts. It means something if you're wearing a black belt. But in some dojos, it doesn't mean that much because they kind of move you through the ranks pretty quick, maybe too quickly. On one hand, I'm saying there's value to be affiliated with the sandbox and inherently with the CNCF. Part of the goal that we're trying to achieve here is clarifying to the general public that there is a significant difference between the sandbox level and the two above that. Maybe we don't want any implicit value there. I think Richard's point is that there's going to be implicit value assigned to that affiliation, whether you like it or not, even if you could. Some wording does make it fairly clear if there was something called experiments. I guess I'm just concerned about overcorrecting or about there is value in making some of the bar higher because while it doesn't feel good to get rejected, it is what inherently provides meaning to the thing. There's some folks by way of another example, there are folks on the call that are cloud native ambassadors and there's only so many of those folks. I think because of that constriction, because there's only so many, the same thing for the TOC members, there's only so many of those folks or those people that are carrying that role. There's an implicit meaning to that. Last thought, I'd be curious, I don't know if other CNCF staffers are on the call that also pay attention to the number of projects going into the Apache Foundation or going into other foundations. I don't know if there's, I guess on both sides, there might be a concern about projects getting flustered and going to other foundations. Also, if we remove the value of being associated with the CNCF, then projects also not, maybe not seeing that value and going to other foundations as well. I don't know how much of that weighs in. So to add to that, I'm wondering, so I agree that this is actually a fairly hard problem to solve and to get right. I just wonder if it's, if the end result is shifting the problem into other place instead of fixing it, because with this proposal going through, I can suspect two things to happen later on. So sandbox being redefined into experimental will actually make some of projects not considering it because they will be higher than that. So they will apply to incubation instead. And so you will move the problem from sandbox applications into incubations applications and the end result struggle will remain the same. On the other hand, if you increase the velocity of handling sandbox applications and you have those higher number of sandbox and smaller projects, if it progress this way in a year or two, once the mass of sandbox projects builds up, some of them succeed, and they will naturally need to apply to incubation. And yet again, you hit struggles of sponsorship to diligence, which is essentially to greater extent bandwidth issue as well. I'm just going to weigh in with one last point. I think for me, one of my challenges that I'm seeing with this is that the CNCF has always been a brand associated with the quality of those projects. And we've said a few times on the call that any tinkering that we do around logos and whatever else is probably not going to change much of the value of the fact that projects and companies behind those projects are still going to use the CNCF brand to market themselves. So in my mind, if we reduce the bar and let lots of sandbox projects in, which by the way is probably the right thing to do if we want to foster the experimentation, we want to foster those communities, because setting the high bar is maybe good for a branding point of view and for maybe providing more curated or opinionated projects, but it's less great for innovation or having the community accelerate development in certain areas. So I can argue in favor of having more sandbox projects and more innovation, but ultimately one of two things is going to happen on the marketing side. And this is something we just need to figure out as we go along. If we have lots more projects and we managed to get the marketing message out right, then the CNCF brand is going to be diluted. If lots of projects are claiming to be CNCF projects, then the value of being a CNCF project is reduced. Or the flip side might happen where projects that maybe abuse the CNCF brand and we have to worry about that aspect of it. But ultimately, we need to be aware that we're consciously making a decision to potentially dilute or complicate the branding and the marketing side of things in favor of the community experimentation, which I think everybody is in favor of the community experimentation, but we need to be aware that this is the impact of this change. I guess I would say we're already there. I think that the sandboxes that exist right now still is not particularly diligence. And so we already have this challenge. And in addition, we have a whole bunch of frustration. So this isn't it and we'll see. I mean, I think the point about changing and reiterating repeatedly is accurate. But I mean, the incubation, like incubation used to be the first stage at the very beginning of this thing and sandbox was created to relieve all the community pressure that you're talking about. And so I don't, I think that while it's tempting to try and go back to a more strict approach, I think actually it would just lead to a lot more work and a lot more frustration as lots and lots and lots and lots of projects tried to go to incubating. And we did really significant due diligence on all of them in order to make sure that we held the bar there. So I don't know. That's my feeling is that our really our only choice is to try and make, is to both try and separate the branding and make sandbox much more, not necessarily easier, but at least systematized so that it's very, very easy to evaluate. And for what it's worth, you know, I kind of, I do completely empathize and sympathize that this is a high problem to solve. And I think you're right. You know, I think we just have to, we just have to figure out how we go when, as we go along, how this is going to affect so to the marketing and the branding side of things. I'm not sure what the alternative is because we have to foster the community. And I want to be clear also, I mean, when we, this discussion came up in the TOC a little bit too, and I think we do have to kick people out too. Right. I mean, I think we do have to be open to the notion that we may actually kick some people out if they truly end up being bad actors. And so I think that's another part of the toolkit. To maybe expand on this point, it was just something which I keep hearing on the edges or with boots on the ground or whatever you like to call it. This tendency of not saying no. Maybe it's just also a case of sometimes saying no earlier or more strongly. So I actually want to jump in here for a significant contributor strategy. And because it's related to this discussion, say something that we actually liked about the proposal, which is a lot of potential CNC of projects in terms of meeting requirements for like incubation run into sort of a chicken and egg problem where in order to be incubating projects, they need to have independent governance and they need to have a bunch of other things that can be hard to develop. Well, the project is sponsored by a single company. If you follow me, like I know, like we have the project Submariner that's sponsored by Rancher, but we've got a bunch of people contributing to it from other companies. But as long as Rancher is 100% responsible for that project, they're not necessarily going to sort of open up the governance until it belongs to the CNCF and it's not their responsibility anymore, which is a completely appropriate attitude, right? When they're responsible, they're responsible and they don't want things to go off the rails. So from a contributor growth perspective and a governance perspective, it's really nice to have a sandbox area that would be an actual sandbox that would have a low bar to entry so that projects can put together all of the requirements that they have in order to become an incubating or graduated project that can be hard to do when they're outside the CNCF or other foundation oversight. I also think having a lower bar for a sandbox doesn't actually reduce the value of the CNCF necessarily. So you have a place where projects can come in and innovate and do things and foster collaboration early on. And then if projects actually want to grow and become more of an industry standard, they can go for incubation and later on to graduation, right? And then that's the value I see for the CNCF. For example, like graduated projects, you can say it is being used by a number of end users, right? And then they're using it in production and in reliable systems. So I see the value there and then the sandbox will be the place where people can come in and collaborate and innovate. And to second, Josh's point, I think the contributor's role is going to be very, very high in the sandbox process. Yeah, people may come for marketing, but people also come to increase the contributions and grow their project. And having a lower bar would definitely help in that. And having the contributor see the world early on would be very helpful. Anyone on mute and have something to be able to say? If the sandbox is successful and under this revised, under this revision, would it be good to address how it is that we consider we'll re-approach the bottleneck that will happen at incubation? I wonder if we're just kind of moving the cheese, I guess. But the point is that not all the projects would join the sandbox and with a goal to move to incubation. Some will join the sandbox for the neutral AP space for collaboration. So yeah, there might be a bottleneck, but I don't think it's going to be as high as we might think at this point. And if CIGS are not going to be involved in reviewing the sandbox projects, they're going to be more, probably more time to review the projects for incubation, helping with due diligence and so on. I would also just say from experience with different projects, the incubation stage is just less pressurized because people are already in the CNC. If they're already, it's just not so angst inducing, I found in my experience, people are more willing to be patient. So I'm less worried about the bottleneck there as well because I think it's psychologically people are used to the process a little more by the time they get there. Yeah. And I also think the bar for incubation is a little bit higher. So then, yeah, so that doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be a bottleneck there. But I think if there is a bottleneck, obviously, it's not happening now because this process is not there yet. But once it's there, then it will have to be reassessed and see how it can be streamlined. Does it imply sandbox is a required step? Or, you know, if the project comes considering, you know, it's already proven or beyond sandbox description, is path to incubation via sandbox still? You know, you can always go straight to incubation and you go straight to graduating if you really wanted to and graduated if you really wanted to. But yeah, no, I don't think there's anything in this that precludes going straight to one of the higher stages. Yeah, but this goes towards the, again, I like the proposal and I agree, such a level in such form would be good. But towards the point of just moving the problem, I guess that's to be seen, but it may imply a bottleneck at incubation stage again. Yeah, for sure. I mean, if we run into problems, if we see that everybody skip sandbox and go straight to incubation, I suspect we'll have to really visit this and change what we do. Because yeah, we would not be achieving our goals if that's the case. I guess that's not that. Things do need to change it. That's actually kind of to my point is like, what is the value of sandbox then? If you can achieve much of the same things through a working group in a SIG or something similar, would we expect that we would have immediate contention around incubation? Not all the projects are ready for that or meet those requirements. But yeah. In the interest of time, I will move on a little bit just to be able to show off what the existing sandbox branding is. This is something that we could continue to keep to be able to make sure that folks, there might not need to be a lot of design work around this. Thoughts? We may have moved on so I can drop on. I know there's questions around the existing sandbox proposals. This is one particular way of being able to say existing sandbox proposals could be decoupled from project presentation, the assessment process. TOC members, is there anything that we're missing as far as what the current proposal for what existing sandbox proposals could be? It looks fine to me, but I'm obviously the rest of the TOC needs to chime in and I don't know if everybody's here. Okay, now just wanted to make sure that, like, I know this is still in flight and we're still trying to be able to work our tails here, but I wanted to be at least able to have a conversation of, hey, that we know that this is going to be kind of messy, but being able to have this conversation is important. And if there's no further comment on this one. Okay. Oh, there was a note in here about public comment. I know that there is a current proposal out there to be able to move public comment periods right now from two weeks to one week. It seems like most people are saying we're good with two weeks, but wanted to invite once now about anything else around that. Plus one to two weeks. Plus one to two weeks. Okay. Then not that I would change this in flight, but our current projects that are in public comment votes will go out next week. So please go ahead and review. And last piece is our projects needing TOC input. We have lots of wonderful annual reviews out there and I'd like to be able to get some eyes on these. I know that Elena, you've done a fantastic job being able to come in, but I wanted to highlight this for everyone else as well. We need three TOC members to be able to approve. That is it for our full agenda today. Is there anything else that people wanted to be able to bring up here? So one point from sick observability. We are currently doing the review of Cortex and we found a lot of the questions in the due diligence document and such very open and not giving a lot of guidance as to the actual intention behind them. So we would like to basically tighten those up and resubmit a counter proposal as it were to the TOC and the wider sick chair group. Anyone who also wants in on that or any specific form we should be following or just hammer it together and send it. So the annual reviews are done by the TOC, right? I'm talking about the due diligence for moving from sandbox into incubating. Can you throw that up in a Google doc? I'd be interested to see your comments on it. This is Josh from SIG Contributor Strategy. Will do and I'll hand it to Amy and she'll probably do whatever needs to be done. Have it help. There is a question from chat. Thik, do you want to be able to use voice or do you just want me to repeat the question for you? Hi, this was the question. I just wanted to understand, sorry if it's already been clarified, but what is the process forward on the in-flight sandbox proposals that have been approved by the SIG and waiting on the TOC review? So I will step in here. I don't believe that anything has been clarified out that is still under discussion and as we get more details around that, it'll probably be over in the GitHub repo. Yeah, sorry. I think yeah, what Amy said is I was on mute. Sorry. No, it's great. I think we're still sorting it out. I think we do want people to sort of trial out the form that we're developing, but it's not done yet and we don't want to block people. So I think we can, you know, we're gonna, if people have specific questions about specific projects that can mail the TOC. All right. Any other questions going once, going twice? I see no further questions, so I will give everyone 10 minutes back out of their day. Good to see everyone. Be well. Thank you. Bye. Appreciate it. Cheers. Good to see you all.


I said it a long time ago, but one of my favorite type of cards in Yu-Gi-Oh is the Neospacian cards. And I am so happy because I am finally trying out the brand new support that makes this deck absolutely insane. But I'm even more excited to announce that I've teamed up with Konami for the Road to Worlds event that will take place in Tokyo this August. Anyone who has Masternule can qualify and become a world champion, that is, if you're good enough. And here's how. Starting on May 9th, anyone who participates by logging into Masternule will be able to receive 1,000 gems, as well as a Royal Finish Blackwing Full Armor Mastercard, and an icon featuring the Full Armor Master himself. To participate, Stage 1 of the qualifier will begin May 15th, lasting until May 28th. Those who rank up to max level for Stage 1 will then be allowed to participate in Stage 2, the Regional Qualifier, on May 25th until May 28th. Regional qualifiers with the highest points during this period will be chosen as their region's rep, and if that's you, you'll be allowed to choose two other players in your region to join you in Tokyo at Worlds. Once there, the World Championship Finals will be held in Tokyo on August 5th and 6th, and will be team-based in groups of three. But hey, even if you don't go that far, you still get the 1,000 gems and the Royal Finish card along with the icon, so there's no reason not to participate. Anyways, I've decided to enter using my NEO stack with the new supports. I know Sprite and Tier Limit will likely be a big threat, but I believe in NEOs more than I believe in them, so I'm not afraid. But I probably should warm up, so I decided to take this deck into rank and play a couple matches. Now, I've said all that, but the hard truth is I'm only silver, and I'm still learning the NEO support, but I feel pretty confident in where I'm at now to the point where I'm ready to jump into these right matches. Ooh, lost the coin toss. So far, from what I'm seeing, this deck really enjoys going second, so hopefully... Thank you very much. What a kind soul. You know, you can always appreciate a Dark Magician avatar user. I'm also on the night skyscraper streets, and a decent opening hand. We really like seeing a hero lives. Obviously, we're going to lose 4,000 life points, but that's a price that we just have to be willing to pay as NEOs players. Our opponent gets to start the game off first. Let's see what they have in store for us. Hopefully, it's nothing too crazy. We do have a bit of a lightning storm, hoping to see a bit more back row here.  Treat ya, boy. Oh, chocolate magician girl. Oh, okay. That's honestly, that's based. I like that. That's a good card. Oh, well, now not so fun. And do I hit this discard one spellcaster monster, draw one card? Do we want him to draw a card? No, let's just not even let him do that. Let's just stop that. Just stop that in its tracks. We're not going to let him draw, but he did get the discard that might have been the intent of the move here. No, actually, I'm not seeing anything. And now, again, I've never been great at reading. Ooh, see, this is what we should have saved it for. Yep, yep, yep, yep. So that was a misplay on my part, but that's fine. You know, I misplay all the time. Maybe he'll even set those spells in traps. Oh, oh, possible jackpot here. I'll take two. I'll take two. So we're going to go ahead and start our draw phase off with a dark ruler. No more pretty powerful card doesn't let any monster effects happen. And neither player can react to it, which is awesome. But first, let's just go ahead lightning storm, destroy those spells and traps. Obviously, he'll have a chance to activate him. But do we care? Hopefully doesn't and he's gone. Okay. Well, next door. Oh, okay. I cannot win a coin toss to save my life today. We do get to go second. Once again, though, this hand is not the greatest. We don't have any of our hand traps in here, which is unfortunate. But oh my. Oh, no, we're going up against math. My my worst subject. Okay. That's going to be pretty hard for us to deal with. I'm not going to lie. This this deck is is brutal. This this one's always been brutal to me. I feel like this is the perfect field for mathematics, though. Math mech diameter, math mech circular. They're all talking. They're all getting their effects off now. It's looking rough. Not the equation. They've added the math mech equation to their hand. We do possess one of the most powerful fusion cards in our arsenal, though, in Nios fusion. This card allows us to special summon one fusion monster from our deck that includes elemental hero Nios just by. I mean, we could do any of them. It's from our deck. So really, it's point it's point in play. The only bad part about Nios fusion is that it does lock us out from special summoning for the rest of the turn. So whatever we hit with this needs to be a big one and it's looking like we might need to call upon some of our biggest monsters if we're going to stand even the slightest chance. If we draw polymerization, we have a actually pretty cracked amount of graveyard effects to draw from, though. But here he goes. He's going into cybers wicked. He's busting out the equation just to get it out of the graveyard onto the field. What's he going to link into next? Banish the card from the graveyard to get a cybers tuner. It's going to be math mech nabla drawing on it. Oh, no. It's deco talker heat soul. That is a lot of back row, man. Hey, hey, whoa, like, please lightning storm lightning storm. Please, please, please, please draw. No, no, no, no, that is not good for me. Uh huh. Well, I'm not sure what we really go about doing here. I guess I go in for a Stratos play. We just play Stratos, but honestly, honestly, this is not a good look. We could go into rainbow rainbow Nios to try and send all these trap cards back to the, you know, the deck. But would we even get to that point? Would he not just find a way to negate it with four back row set? That is not pretty. Our opponent's clearly thinking about whether or not he wants to stop elemental hero Stratos. I kind of hope he does. Honestly, if he wants to stop Stratos, that's not bad. What?  Oh, now we've got some interesting card combos that I'm excited to show off. Okay. Okay. The third duel is all it took to get an interesting hand. We are going to be seeing some pretty big pluses here with the forbidden droplet to stop any negative effects, maybe depending on how many cards we have. And it looks like we're going up against a classic Dark Magician deck. Dark Magical Circle could pose an issue. If it gets to that point, I'm not sure it will though. We might be able to just turbo throw it out. Oh my goodness. It's Chocolate Magician Girl again. He's going to get the draw though. I, uh, I'm just going to let that happen this time. Chocolate Magician Girl's effect does come out here and Dark Magician Girl is what they ditch. Drawing a card at the cost of Dark Magician Girl. That seems a little, little harsh to me, but that's the turn you've put yourself in a very dangerous position here. But man, now we have a lot of plays available to us. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to activate a new piece of Neo support in and engage Neo space. This allows us to send one Neo Spacey Monster and one Elemental Hero Monster, one from the hand, one from the deck and special summon one Neo Spacey Monster level five or higher. So let's just go ahead, play this and let's get it pop it. All right. So first we're going to get with the Nios in our hand. So that's Aqua Dolphin. Then we're going to take one in our deck. So we go with Shadow Mist because once Shadow Mist hits the graveyard, we're also going to get an extra effect off that. And the one we want to special summon is usually I go for Spirit of Nios. I'm not sure if this is correct just yet, but him getting special summon allows us to get a Polly to our hands, which is why I do it. Uh, or wait, sorry. Nope. No, no, no, sorry. He's not the Polly. Uh, and then we get the Shadow Mist as well. Look at this. This is how plus you can go with new Neo support. It is amazing. Shadow Mist lets us get a card from our deck. Usually I go at just liquid just in case I could do anything. Now we get to add any fusion monster we want.    So first we're going to activate the effect of Crosskeeper. This is going to discard to the graveyard and allow us to spring forth our special summoned. We can pretty much special summon anything. I think I really do. I kind of want to go for Aqua Dolphin. Is that stupid? Is going for Aqua Dolphin dumb? This would give us his effect, which I think would be pretty funny. You know what? Get Aqua Dolphin back. Actually wait, it's too late to say wait. Man, I messed up. I should have got the elemental hero for the fusion play, but I wanted to be funny. I wanted to be a funny guy. Okay, so I'm going to go pretty crazy here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to activate Spirit of Nios to shuffle him back and special summon one normal elemental hero monster. Obviously we know who that's going to be, right?  Call me crazy. I'm then going to activate Instant Contact. Another new piece of support that allows me to pay a thousand life points and special summon one level seven or lower elemental hero or Neo Spatia monster from my extra deck. That choice is of course going to be Flame Wingman, even though I could have many choices here.  I'm going to activate the effect of Crosskeeper who states once I fusion summon an elemental hero monster, I get to draw two, another plus. I do have to put one back to the deck and I'll do, hmm, honestly, it doesn't really matter. Let's get rid of engage. And I think I'm going to lightning. I can't lightning storm. Whoops. I don't, I control monsters. Whoops. That was my bad. Now, now we just do the crazy thing. So if you look at my extra deck, I do in fact have elemental hero shining Nios wingman, one Nios, one wingman fusion monster and the effects go crazy. Let's walk it through now. So we go with the Polly, get rid of Flame Wingman and Nios face up attack. Boom. He's here. Look at him. Uh, he hits the field. 4,000 attack. That's not all. I get to use a little bit of my abilities now. I get to select one to two cards to destroy. Let's start with this and then also I'll do this. I'm not a little crazy, but then that's not all either. You know what?  Nios base connector, special summons, speed up the editing editor, editor, make the video go faster. It's getting crazier. Grand ball into Nios fusion to bring out rainbow Nios by ditching both Nios and rainbow dragon. And now I'm going to. Oh, I can't use awkward dolphin. No, I just discarded a card by accident. It doesn't matter. It boosted my attack points. Got him. All right. Now let's get a little crazy. Shall we one and two and it's over just like that. We put over 8,000 points of damage and potentially way more. If I didn't play the way I did, but you can see how quickly this deck can ramp up. Let's go ahead and get into another match. Obviously, I'm hoping for a duel here where we can see a bit more back and forth. The Nios deck isn't like super top tier meta or anything. So I do want to show it getting like pushed around and we keep getting second. Everybody's being very nice to me. We got the golden field. Huh? All right. Pretty good going second hand. We didn't get any big fusion pop off cards though. So we're going to have to hope we see that. Um, we want to stop that right away. Tier limits. Oh, this is this is one of the this is one of the archetypes that's going to pose some problems at the upcoming at the upcoming event. We're going to just ash blossom it. Honestly, we I'm not experienced at all against tier limits. I just know they are scary and I hope I can out pilot them, but let's be real. It might not happen. Oh wait, that doesn't even matter, huh? Agito, the ancient Sentinel does hit the field and tier limits is here as well. And they're gone into time thief. Redoer interesting play comes out hits the field time thief. Redoer can steal the top card from our deck. Hopefully it's not a good hit. Please don't be a good hit. I really needed to be bad here. If it's Nios fusion, I'm upset. I'll be very I'm going to cry. Please don't do. Come on, man. Wait, what? What happened? Oh, wait, what? Wait, what? Oh, he only had he only had two monsters to banish. Why did he do that? Did he just want to stack his graveyard? Perhaps that was a real interesting play. I'm not sure if I understand it, but I guess the top card was Nios fusion. It hurt me. Yeah, I'll let him take that. I don't really mind. I guess. What did he take? My lightning storm. Hey, that would have been a pretty good card too, but that's fine. We're going to just go ahead and normal summon grand mole, not really a play I would do often in this deck, but it's still just a totally fine play. Then we're going to go into Nios fusion and what comes next might be a little crazy, but we'll have to see what happens. If he can stop Nios fusion, that's pretty bad for us. It doesn't look like he wants to. Ah, so this is where it gets confusing. I could go for rainbow Nios, but I could also go for the beat down, which would let us search out more spells, but I am a little bit worried about that back row there, especially if he's choosing not to activate it now. So I'm just going to go for the big play. I think we go bigger, go home. Again, tier limits, very scary car to see. So I'm just going to try to do everything in my power to stop it. Doesn't look like anything's happening just yet. So I'm just going to play forbidden droplets. Not to use it just to use my effect on it. Rainbow Nios lets us send one spell and trap we control to the graveyard to shuffle all there's back in the deck. So right droplets going to hit the graveyard, which is a harsh lose for us, but if this card's not activatable, I'll take it as a win. We want to shuffle that card back into the deck, keep it as far away from me as possible. It's in the deck. Okay, good. After that, we're just going to. Well, I guess I leave that up just in case. I'm going to go ahead and let grandma just send him back. Maybe do I do that? Yeah, we do that. I don't want to give him anything else in his graveyard. Oh, he does get to draw one card though. Unfortunate. Unfortunate. He gets to go plus one. We're going to.  Just so we have an extra bit of super poly target in case 4,500. I'll take it. Set the super poly just in case. Boom. All right, go. Now it's your turn. Now you get to play the game. This is bad. I only have one card set face down and rainbow Nios is completely defenseless. Or at least that's what he thinks. Yeah, got a little bit of defense right here. Now to hopefully doesn't force me to use though. Sets a card. That's that. That is not. Oh, now he's forcing me to decide again. Well, what would I be more afraid of the monster of the spelling trap? Probably the up.  Yep. I don't see that. I don't see the monster really causing it, but the monster could add more to the graveyard though. But then I can also just bounce the monster back. It's really not that big of a deal. I think I'm overthinking this. Go for the spelling trap. Grand Molder monster. It's that simple. Superpoly get out of here. Yep. I'm sending that bet. What's this? Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This was not a part of the deal, dude. But do I care? I don't think I care. I don't think I really care to be honest. I'm going to activate the effect of miracle fusion. It won't give me anything too crazy, but I want to activate it now to get my elemental hero Nios. Let's get rid of that and just go ahead and use the ash blossom in our graveyard. That card's not getting any more use. And welcome back brave Nios. If this card is sent to the graveyard by card effect, okay, well, I'm not really worried about sending it to the graveyard by card effect, but I could also bump it back to his hand. I think we should just take it out now. I think we should just take it out now to be honest. Does he have anything in his graveyard that I'm particularly afraid of? I think we bounce back the monster he set. Just bounce it back. Get it out of here. We go for the brave Nios. This is not going to destroy it by card effect, but this will let us activate brave Nios's effect to search out a fusion spell. And this should end the game. And it does. Okay. Well, we're out of the fire on that one. I think that was mostly just because we played quick. So we didn't really have to get into a back and forth game, but that's exactly what you want to do with this deck sometimes. And we get the rank up to silver tier three. I got to get, man, I got to get back to plat and then further beyond. Third duel. This one is just going to be the one where I let loose. I've talked about the cards enough. You understand it. I like that card base. You understand it. I'll keep explaining any big plays I go through, but I got to let loose. I got to let my hair down. I got a streak out of silver. Somebody got to take a hot streak. Oh, the trap card favor contact. Another great piece of new support. This one just lets us straight up special summon one fusion monster from our extra deck with a hero as material, ignoring its summoning conditions. So it's just that crazy. And if I place elemental heroes into the deck, neither player can return the monster special summon by it to the extra deck. So just an extra piece of more defense, just a great card over on. I only run one of them though, but one's really all you need to this guy. All he does is set a card face down. I got to go crazy. Draw max see a bit of hand trap just in case he has a plan for us. Like I said earlier in the video, you might be able to piece it together. We're going to go with a hero lives 4,000, but we get Stratos from it. Stratos hits the field and Stratos is going to let us add one hero monster from our deck to our hand. That hero monster is going to be none other than shadow mist. The reason we go for shadow mist is again, that graveyard effect is going to be very nice when we summon shadow mist and then we're going to want to link into Preda plant classic card as old as time itself. Link away. Preda plant hits the field. Even if this doesn't go off, not the biggest deal in the world. We still get that graveyard effect, which is very, very nice. Just going to go ahead and add a bit of a liquid soldier here. And again, we can play pretty safe knowing that we do have favorite contact to back us up. We don't want to get too low here. I think we might want to go for maybe a classic Polly classic Polly could be pretty good here. We could just need. Yeah, let's just honestly with my life points being this low, I'm just going to Neo's fusion because I kind of want to go for rainbow Neo's. It's getting a little scary. I'm not going to lie. It's a little scary with that low life points, but now we have some protection. We can get rid of Preda plant. Not even have to interact with his monster that much. So Preda plant. Sorry. I love you. Got to go get back to the deck. Don't want to see that card anymore. Still main phase one just set now. We're in a very strong position for the rest of the game. A lot of defense here. Maxi in our hand in case he goes crazy. But yeah, and the spirit of Neo's in our hand as well. That's huge. Could he not have an answer? Oh my goodness. He's taking it as a well fine. I'm activating favor contact anyway. Yeah. Yeah. You should have known about me. You should have known about me. I'll go with elemental hero sunrise because it's in pretty important card in the deck. Honestly. So let's get Neo's back in the deck and shadow mist as well. Boom boom back to the deck and being just for sunrise to the field sunrise gives us even more plus allowing us to get miracle fusion. And now the turn is over. The game is pretty much over too. But can I get crazy? Nope.  Let me show another plus. I'm going to special summon a level four. I'll get stratos.  I'm just going to go ahead and get a Neo's at this point. Why not? He might as well stare at me while I get the win. Then I'll activate miracle fusion because that'll allow me to fuse liquid soldier and stratos together to form absolute zero a card that is pretty nuts in and of itself. But I'm mostly doing this just to get liquid in the graveyard because then I get to go plus even more. No, I don't because I think I banished them. I'm still learning the deck. That's that's embarrassing. Sorry about this, but there you go. Obviously, I still need to rank up gets into some more like I still want to test this deck against some heavier competition, but for now that is going to be the video. Hopefully enjoyed it. If you want to see this deck come back in another video, just let me know. And once again, thank you to Konami for allowing me to be a part of this. I'm just such a big fan of the game. So I appreciate them reaching out. And again, starting on May 9th, anyone who participates by logging into master duel will receive a thousand gems and a royal finished blackwing full armor master card and a whole ton more. And of course, don't forget to participate in stage one of the qualifiers, which begin May 15th and last until May 28th. So definitely get out there.  Try it out. And again, even if you don't win, you still get that thousand gems and the royal finished card. You can't go wrong. Thank you to Konami. Thank you for watching. Hope you have a good one. I've been out of Doya and I will see you in the next video.