I was meaning to post but i generally forgot this week so i'll drop a few thoughts about nu in spl so far:
Generally speaking there have been a couple of records that have surprised me. Raiders NU being 3-1 and playing really well has impressed me a lot, Zukushiku proving a lot of haters wrong so far being 2-1, but there's still 5 games left in the season, but from what i saw from his games, he has played very well.
On the other side of the spectrum, Eternally and Hootie being 1-3 respectively was also a shock as they were ranked rather high on the rankings, so i'm not quite sure what is needing to change. Obviously Evan stepping in for Hootie in week 5 has happened but Eternally has no backup if he manages to lose this week, and if scooters lose the week (hopefully hehe) then he may just tilt extremely badly.
My highlight games so far:
Eternally vs Zukushiku week 3 - this game was a fast paced hyper offense battle that in the end came down to some innovative sets and rolls to decide the game. When Eternally had the 5-4 advantage at the start of the game that he played for by getting the kill on the slowbro and revenging the sneasel, zuku managed to claw his way back into the game using rotom as his main source of momentum. Overall Eternally's lack of clicking stealth rocks cost him the game as he managed to lose out to a low roll from a mold breaker eq onto rotom, but a decent and exciting contest.
0 Atk Mold Breaker Druddigon Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Rotom: 208-246 (86.3 - 102%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO
Lax vs cb jose altuve week 3 - This game was packed with top plays and quirky innovative sets such as z-focus blast heliolisk, fire blast slowbro, lycanroc midnight + scyther somehow managing to beat a steelix. This game was played well, with meeps having the match up at preview, however when overpredicting with steelix dying to an all out pummelling, that cost him the game which opened up the possibility for scyther to do something. However CM slowbro during mid game cause a lot of scares for lax, having toxic lycanroc midnight saved him. In the end, it came down to what z-move klinklang carried, luckily for lax it was it was corkscrew crash and slowbro managed to chew the hit and ohko with the fire blast innovation.
Teddeh vs ict week 3 - This game is probably the closest game so far in the first 4 weeks and I will explain why from my own personal pov (excuse my bias also as I was playing this game too). From preview, samurott had an excellent match up vs my team as 5/6 mons were hit super effectively by potential sd samurott coverage and venusaur was needed to check it. Nevertheless, when i choked away my venusaur by risking the ice punch when slowbro hard walled the av hariyama, it was down to me to play extremely aggressively to attempt to get back into the game. I did this by clicking EQ 3 times from piloswine, firstly on an altaria hitting the hariyama, secondly on the switch out into whimsicott, then again predicting the pivot into samurott on the ice shard which allowed me to 2 hit ko the rotter as I chewed the hydro pump. In hindsight, i assumed that it might have been a scarf samurott or something similar, but chewing the hit meant that it gave me a solid chance in that game. From that point onwards, it was my goal to attempt to not let klinklang setup at any point as I had theorized that Z-wild charge would have been a good option vs me from my team choices in previous weeks. Around turn 22 in the game, it was still highly in ict's favour as he had a 85% rhydon to check both emboar / archeops and a full health altaria and klinklang ready to sweep at any point it's given the chance to setup. However doubling into archeops on altaria meant that i could acro on the predicted toxic to put it in 2hko range, then eq on the rhydon switch in gave me a chance to 2 hit ko it. At which point when ict knew if he spammed stealth rock, he could put slowbro / emboar in a range where they both 100% died to his coverage moves on klinklang, i knew i had to somehow get rid of the stealth rocks. By pivoting into slowbro, he knows that he can't use klinklang to setup on bro, so doubling back into archeops to defog away the rocks was a play that gave me the best chance of winning the game as rhydon was in eq range. He used a defeatist archeops as setup fodder for klinklang which forced a tricky end game. going into a 91% emboar meant that it 100% lived a potential frustration and forced the z-move if it had it, however it turned out to be giga impact which indeed ohko'd emboar, giving 1 free turn for slowbro to attempt the 2hit ko. At which point i managed to chew the gigavolt havoc as i managed to defog away the rocks, allowing me to kill the klinklang and live on 1%.
+1 252+ Atk Klinklang Gigavolt Havoc (175 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 352-416 (89.3 - 105.5%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO
Overall I managed to slack off back up with bro to put altaria in ice shard range giving sneasel a 100% chance of victory and winning the game, but overall by far the closest game so far in my opinion.
Predictions for the second half of spl:
I think that meeps / lax / me will come out with best records based on how we've been playing so far.
Eternally will bring it back later in the season with a win streak starting week 6.
Earth may struggle a bit more as he has been using very similar team structures or relied on gimmicks.
Zukushiku to finish with a positive record.
SM NU
