Approved by 5gen & S1nn0hC0nfirm3d | Amazing Art by Albatross
(Interview Date: 30th of September 2021)
Hi everyone and welcome to Player of the Week. This is the project where we discover more about the well known players of the ZU community through a series of questions. I hope to continue making this series enjoyable to read as well as insightful. Today, I'm joined by a ZUPL manager who is very involved in the old gens metagame development in ZU...
SBPC!!
Favourite Pokemon:
(BW and ORAS Council Member, Manager and BW Player of the Pay Day Persians)
Ditto used Transform!
Ditto transformed into Excadrill!
*exca dreel*
Hello SBPC! Thanks for joining us today for Player of the Week. How are you doing today?
Honestly pretty good! A little tired but nothing slowing me down.
That's good to hear. Starting off simple, would you mind telling us a bit about yourself?
Well, I'm currently attending OSUIT and majoring in security, but aside from school, I'm from Oklahoma and have been playing mons competitively since.. early high school? sometime around then was when I started
Ah nice. How did you first get into ZU, and in particular the old gens?
I picked up ZU when I was bored in my sophomore English class, actually. Just kinda clicked onto the room and an SM tour was happening so I grabbed a specs Rotom-Frost sample and just kinda fell in love with the tier. Old gens has always been an interest for me, especially since there's just so much that isn't messed with that makes for room to innovate and it's appealing to have that kind of creative freedom. I found the ZU Old Gens thread while randomly scrolling and Durza was more than willing to help me get into the tiers and run a few test games with me.
That's pretty cool and now you're on a couple old gens councils which is also neat. What's your favourite ZU old gen at the moment and why?
I get a lot of people are gonna expect me to say BW, since the gen itself is just something I'm known for playing, but in terms of ZU exclusively? SM. I don't think there will ever come a meta I just adore playing more than SM ZU. There's so much you can do in it and it never gets stale, even stuff that's less powerful in the meta just has compositions that they can genuinely put work in with and it doesn't feel like you're just carrying your 6 with more top heavy threats
Ah ye SM is definitely a favourite of many of the established ZU mains. What are your thoughts on the state of each of the old gens that you play/build? Is there anything you think is problematic in any of them?
Honestly? I like every gen right now, nothing really feels too overwhelming and while BW has a bit of a spikes issue its no different than the most of BW lower tiers, although I have a post in the works towards how council is going to address the complaints as well as the metagame as a whole. But personally I think every gen is pretty balanced out right now, no real complaints.
That's good to hear and it'll be interesting to see how you tackle to Spikes issue. ZUPL has definitely been good for showcasing and developing the old gens. Speaking of ZUPL, you signed up as a manager this time around and essentially swapped roles with 5gen, was there any reasoning behind this? How has the managerial experience been so far?
There really wasn't much deep reasoning to it haha, just 5gen was talking to me and said he wasn't huge on managing this year and I said I'd switch him roles since I wanted us to go back in and grab a win. Managing has been a blast though, I'm really happy with my team as well, since its a super strong lineup with a lot of synergy, everyone's cool and the most of us are pretty active in team chat
Oh fairs. Glad to hear you've had a lot of fun so far and that's good that the team's been working really well together and proved a lot of the community wrong about their initial predictions. Are there any players that have impressed you a lot and were there any highlight moments for you so far?
Everyone's impressed me in one way or another honestly, but I wanna shout out our DPPers in Beauts and 275p, they've been working absolute overtime on this meta to find ways to stay ahead of the game, and 275p is probably one of the most reliable supports on the entire team regardless of the meta. I can't really pick out any highlight games in particular (mostly because I haven't seen everything, college keeps me busy lol) but I think our vs Hakas week was just such a good showing for the team as a whole.
That's really good. Your team as a whole has been very consistent as a whole; I remember seeing that 7 players on your team had a record of 3-2 before playoffs which was pretty funny but great at the same time. Last ZUPL related question, who was your favourite opponent to play so far?
DnB. No more explanation needed. I know I lost, I don't care. DnB was a fun game to play.
I've never in my life had a game against dnb that I wasn't just absolutely thrilled to play
Ah awesome. Definitely will be interesting to see if you can one up him next time. You're quite a busy guy with a bunch of other hobbies outside of mons. Do you still end up playing Splatoon and other games competitively these days? If so how has that been going?
Yeah I still play Splatoon 2, we just recently played in Superjump and ended up placing 44th overall, which isn't too bad. I've also been starting to learn Street Fighter V since its a pretty fun game and it's definitely worth sinking a few hours into.
Oh cool, are you excited about the new splatoon game coming out probably next year, while we're on the subject of new games are there any you have your eye on and any thoughts on the Pokemon ones releasing at the end of the year/start of next year?
Splatoon 3 looks so fucking hype. Honestly I wouldn't be too shocked if I just dropped Pokemon for a good minute to pursue reaching the top level there. The Legends Arceus game looks pretty neat and BDSP is gonna be pretty par for course with remakes, so I'm excited for the lineup of games coming in the future.
What are some of your other hobbies that you pursue during your free time?
I play a lot of pool with my friends, so I've gotten pretty good at it just because we all like to get a little competitive, but other than that I dabble a lot in music related stuff, just listening to whatever comes up at the time.
Sounds fun. What sort of stuff do you do for music nowadays? Iirc you used to play in a band.
Yeah I used to play in an orchestral band, but now I just kinda listen to random albums and playlists, but I still occasionally go back to help out with high school bands that I have connections with the staff for, since often I'll privately tutor without charging them
Very nice thing to do. As for music, what have been your favourite albums/tracks that were released this year?
Oh gods recency bias is going to kill me on this one. The Melodic Blue - Baby Keem and MONTERO - Lil Nas X have flooded my playlists as of the past week and honestly are two amazing albums. Just, every track on these albums are worth the listen.
Solid choices.
Since you always do a predicts based on who would win a fist fight at least once in ZUPL, how would you rank your own team's fistfighting ability from best to worst?
Alright, so. Easily the best on the team is 5gen, dude is just stacked. I'd probably say below that is Me, then Landon, then Hitmonstars, following that is probably a toss up between LPY and Oran, with Beauts coming behind those two. 275p and POAT aren't the fighting type so they're a bit lower but I'm sure they could hold their own. 5dots plays chess and is pretty good so I'm just gonna make the assumption he doesn't fight much either, too smart for that. I actually have no idea how Lockjaw would fight so he can go just about anywhere.
loool, that's an amazing answer
yeah im sitting here just laughing at this
Do you have a favourite food favourite fast food restaurant, what would you normally order there?
Sonic, It's a bit pricey here but I just really like their drinks so I usually get a burger with an order of cheese fries and a vanilla coke
Ah cool, they don't exist over here :(.
It's a drive in place, pretty good.
Sounds good. Do you spend much time watching films or shows? Any favourites?
I'm not going to lie I don't watch a lot of shows, mostly just watch stuff with my mom on occasion since its how we just hang out. Squid Game was a really good show we binged, and recently we watched the new fast and furious movie, although it was more me and my brother making fun at the ridiculousness of the scenes/plot and the occasional family jokes.
I see, interesting stuff. Squid Game is essentially all over social media at the moment lmao, kinda insane and ye Fast and Furious can be wack with all their stunts.
Squid Game is just so good, like, so so good.
Please if you haven't watched it go watch it.
Agreed.
Penultimate question now, do you have a team you don't mind sharing?
Yeah i got a couple, let me fetch
(water)I'll pass SM just incase current BW teams age horribly with bans and whatnot, but here's a fun one I built around Specs Oricorio, using a taunt + Water Z Floatzel to keep pressure against teams that want to use bulkier setters.
Neat seems like a lot of fun
and here's a dpp build me and beauts put together that uses scarf tangela to clean up once tspikes are down
Scarf Tang seems wacky af but really cool at the same time
Its pretty cool to just use it and clean teams out once you can position it
Interesting. Thanks for sharing these.
Last but not least, do you have any final remarks and is there anyone you would like to give a shoutout to?
shouts 5gen for being my man throughout all the years, been awesome to be here throughout it all, and love to Tack and DnB for being the fuckin squad
Great and thanks for answering these questions, was a pleasure!
No problem! You have a good evening.
Feel free to ask to SBPC any questions you want!
