Premier League Spotlights: LCPL

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Introduction

Hi there! Welcome to The Flying Press Premier League Spotlight! The Premier League has long been one of the most popular tournament formats on Smogon, as it combines the rush of bidding with the collaborative atmosphere of team play. The Smogon Premier League is the largest and most prestigious such tournament, but many communities on Smogon have Premier Leagues of their own. In this series, we will bring you complete coverage of each Premier League on Smogon as they come to a close. Today, we're covering the Little Cup Premier League!

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Introduction to LCPL

The Little Cup Premier League, or LCPL, followed the footsteps of many other tier-specific Premier League tournaments. This year, rozes took it upon himself to host the tournament, and it turned out to be very successful! Heck, activity issues were practically nonexistent... that is, until the playoffs!

Now's not the time for activity drama, though! As for the format, LCPL followed a path similar to other PLs: each of the eight managers was given 100,000 credits to spend in a live auction, wherein they bid, upbid, and upbid even further for their preferred players. Those players faced off in all sorts of LC metagames; specifically, teams matched up in 3 ORAS LC matches, 1 early XY LC (commonly referred to as TangMa due to the presence of Tangela and Yanma) match, 1 BW2 LC match, and 1 DPP LC match each week. Over seven short weeks, each team faced every other team in intense head-to-head matchups, with the four teams having the best record advancing to a two-stage playoff.

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The Auction

The auction was held on the 23rd of April, resulting in the following teams:

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The most expensive players in the auction were Star. and blarajan, who sold for an exorbitant 26k each. Of note, however, is Mambo's mid-auction trade for Confide; he joined the Mambos at the expense of a whopping 30k!

Of course, we have to give props to Nineage, who helped run the bot for the auction and ensured everything ran smoothly, and to macle, who broke his one-year streak of resetting LCPL drafts!

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The Early Weeks

The three weeks at the start of the season were pretty run-of-the-mill in terms of the actual battles played. The post-Week 3 standings began to show a decent playoff picture, as Jac's Snivy Subterfuge began to pull away and look like real tournament favorites, though teams like The Remoraiders and the Massive Stat-Boost Munnas stayed close behind. Only the Squirtle Squad and Los Mambos were truly falling behind at this point, and, overall, the standings were fairly tight:

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The early weeks were generally unsurprising in terms of the battles played, but they still had a huge impact on the outcome of the tournament. For the most part, the standings listed above were consistent, with the top four teams all eventually reaching the playoffs. The most interesting part of the early weeks, however, was the unfortunate case of OP. Having made the decision that his real life track and field ordeals somehow outweighed playing online Pokemon, OP quit the forums, and, by extension, LCPL. Just before quitting, he named Nineage his co-captain; now, Nineage was left to manage a winless team with players he didn't draft. Despite what a great user Nineage is, the loss of OP proved to be too much to overcome for the Squirtle Squad.

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The Later Weeks

The midseason auction brought key players to a number of squads, notably introducing standout players such as Sam, Artemisa, and Kingler12345 into the LCPL fray. These players went on to perform quite well, making their acquisitions excellent managerial decisions. However, despite the midseason mix-up, the later weeks mostly followed the pattern of the early weeks, with the Snivy Subterfuge at the top of pack and the Remoraiders, Tirtougas, Munnas, and Timburrs all vying for playoff positions. When it came down to the final week, the final playoff seeding was largely based on the outcome of the Timburrs-Remoraiders set. Specifically, the playoff scenarios looked like this:

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• Snivy Subterfuge: Officially advanced to the playoffs.
• The Remoraiders: Advance to the playoffs with a Win or a Tie or a Loss with the Munnas losing and a Timburrs Tie, Loss, or Win with low game difference in both series.
• Massive Stat-Boost Munnas: Advance to the playoffs with a Win or a Tie with the Timburrs losing or tying or winning with a low game difference in both series or a Loss with the Timburrs losing.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Tirtougas: Advance to the playoffs with a Win or a Tie with the Timburrs losing or tying or winning with a low game difference in both series or a Loss with the Timburrs losing.
• Morningwood Timburrs: Advance to the playoffs with a Win with either the Munnas or Tirtougas losing with a high game difference and the Remoraiders losing with a high game difference or a Tie with either the Tirtougas or Munnas losing their series 0-6.

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At this point, unfortunately, the Squirtles, Noibats, and Mambos had been eliminated from the competition despite the best efforts of standout players such as tcr of the Mambos.

As it turned out, the Timburrs managed to pull out a Tie; unfortunately for them, however, neither the Tirtougas nor the Munnas lost their series 0-6 (but the Munnas came dangerously close) and the Timburrs were eliminated from the tournament. That left just four teams in the running for LCPL 5: the Snivy Subterfuge, The Remoraiders, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tirtougas, and the Massive Stat-Boost Munnas.

But hold your horses there, sonny! Before we get into the playoffs, there was a little bit of Brazilian beef to settle:

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Highlight Match

ORAS: mad0ka vs GOAO

It was truly the perfect storm. GOAO had recently been caught up in a ghosting scandal in regards to Grand Slam due to his bragging in various LC chats about having ghosted Bouff, which was reported to the TDs by a rascally user named mad0ka. Crazy, right?! The two users at the heart of the biggest ghosting scandal LC had ever seen were matched up in Week 7, leaving the door open for one hell of a match!

And a hell of a match it was, at least for mad0ka. GOAO crafted an extremely bulky squad that had a great matchup against mad0ka's Sticky Web team. Right off the bat, however, GOAO's Vullaby was revealed to be the Nasty Plot variant, which was a huge threat to mad0ka's team. On turn 10, GOAO managed to paralyze mad0ka's Recycle Drifloon, which was absolutely essential to his victory. There was still hope for mad0ka when her Abra managed to pick up the KO on GOAO's Vullaby, but that hope vanished once GOAO set up his Agility Porygon against her RestTalk Chinchou on turn 24. GOAO proceeded to sweep the rest of mad0ka's team, earning the Tirtougas a much-needed win.

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The Playoffs

Remember at the beginning when we mentioned activity losses? Well, now's the time! Matched up against the fourth-seeded Munnas, the Snivy Subterfuge looked to be in a prime position to play their way into the finals. Unfortunately, however, tragedy struck. After going up 2-0 in the series, the remaining four Munnas went out looking for their opponents so that they could complete their matches. What they found, however, was a mere shadow of the team they were facing. Unable to schedule with their dead opponents, the Munnas began calling for activity wins. In a cruelly bizarre twist to a tournament that had not yet seen an activity win given even once, only those two matches were played, and the Munnas took home a truly stunning 6-0 victory.

The Remoraiders-Tirtougas set was much more ordinary, though the ending of the final game was pretty funny. Sam, one of the Remoraiders's standout midseason acquisitions, found himself facing FLCL with a 3-2 series lead. A win for Sam would mean finals glory for the Remoraiders, while FLCL was struggling to keep his team in the running by forcing yet another tie for the Tirtougas. FLCL brought TorchicPass, and he began setting up just a few turns into the match. Sam, however, had a Haze Murkrow, which pretty much 6-0ed FLCL's squad. Realizing this, FLCL forfeited on turn 11, losing the game and the series for his team. Nobody could put it better than Star.:

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With the TMNT officially x-ed out, it was finally time to decide the tournament once and for all. The second-seeded Remoraiders took on the fourth-seeded Munnas in an incredibly competitive series that wasn't over until the final match was played. Despite the best efforts of the Remoraiders players, the LCPL crown ultimately fell to the Munnas, who secured the championship with this resounding 4-2 victory:

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Closing Words

Corporal Levi's Massive Stat-Boost Munnas persevered to the end and secured their Little Cup Premier League legacies, taking LCPL 5 in an amazing series over Coconut.'s Remoraiders! Congratulations!

Overall, LCPL 5 was an incredible tournament full of excellent matches and wonderful upsets in which the only constants were Shrug's ability to get haxxed out of wins and Cased's ability to lose at Team Preview. The tournament featured a great mix of old faces and new talent alike, and it can only get better from here!

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Conclusion

Don't forget to tune in for the next edition of Premier League Spotlights, and be sure to stick around in LC!

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