Premier League Spotlights: NUPL

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Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Premier League Coverage! Premier Leagues have long been one of the most popular tournament formats on Smogon, because they combine 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 end. Today, we are covering the NeverUsed Premier League.

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Introduction to NUPL

The NeverUsed Premier League, or NUPL, was the first Premier League on Smogon outside of the official Smogon Premier League. Started by FireMage at the end of the BW era, NUPL returned for its fourth season this year under the direction of Quite Quiet.

This year's NUPL featured six teams: the Money Maker Musharnas, managed by Raseri; the Krusty Krabs, managed by Kiyo; the Jive Jynxes, managed by Omfuga; the Vibrant Vivillons, managed by some scrub; the Rowdy Rampardos, managed by Evan., and the Kling Klangs, managed by Deej Dy. The managers were selected based on their involvement across many aspects of NeverUsed.

As for format, this year's NUPL was pretty standard for a Premier League: each team had 100,000 credits to spend on players at a live auction and then had the players they bought face the players from another team in a variety of NU-based tiers. The selected format was 3 ORAS NU, 2 BW NU, 1 DPP NU, and 1 ADV NU match per week, in addition to one Bo3 set. Over the course of five weeks, each team played another team, and the two teams with the best records faced each other in the finals.

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The Auction

With the managers and format chosen, the NUPL draft was held, resulting (after a few trades) in these rosters:

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In terms of pricing, the two most expensive players in the draft were Finchinator, who was bought by the Krusty Krabs for 31,500 credits, and Cased, who went to the Jive Jynxes for 20,000 credits.

Here's how some of the managers reacted to the draft:

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The Early Weeks

The first couple of weeks that kicked off NUPL this year really did show which teams could be expected to contend for the title at the end.

After three weeks had passed, the Jive Jynxes stood above the rest as the top team. They didn't give away a single win during any of the first three weeks and only tied once, to the Krusty Krabs. Dominating the first week, the Jynxes showed just how competent the team's players were and put a lot of pressure on the remaining teams.

Second, just slightly behind the Jive Jynxes, were the Krusty Krabs. Starting out with ties against the Musharnas and the Jynxes, they had an impressive week three against the Rowdy Rampardos, which based on record was a stronger team. bugzinator and Sweep had very solid performances, and together they won five out of the six BW games, with The Goomy picking up the sixth and making the Krusty Krabs undefeated in BW.

The Rowdy Rampardos ended their three weeks slightly below the top. After a strong start, defeating both the King Klangs and the Vibrant Vivillons 5-3, their week three match against the Krusty Krabs ended in a devastating 2-6 loss. Despite the team's best attempts, they couldn't keep up their impressive win streak and ended up 2-1 in the first three weeks. Among the Rampardos players, idiotfrommars stood out as the most consistent of them all, winning all games he played, even in week three, when most of his team was losing. The Rowdy Rampardos had several other strong and consistent players, which is shown in their records, and promised to put up a good fight in the coming weeks as well.

The King Klangs and the Vibrant Vivillons had similar starts to their seasons. They both lost week one and followed up with a win each in week two and week three, respectively, putting them in a position where they could still win if they performed in week four and five.

Of the bottom three teams, the Money Maker Musharnas had the best start with their tie with the Krusty Krabs. With a completely unexpected win, Raseri defeated Finchinator in a series everyone predicted him to lose (Game 1 (ORAS), Game 2 (DPP), Game 3 (BW)). That was everything that went well for the Musharnas for the early weeks, however. Losing to both the King Klangs and the Jive Jynxes (despite another stellar performance (Game 1 (ORAS), Game 2 (BW), Game 3 (DPP)) from Raseri when he defeated CasedVictory) in week two and three three put them in an unfavorable position for the rest of the tournament.

The first weeks showed real promise in several users but also saw some promising names falling short.

One of the big disappointments in the early weeks was blunder. Despite being a strong player, his 1-2 record was a real upset. Having fairly strong records in previous iterations of NUPL, much more was expected of him, but he failed to deliver.

Another one, who also happenned to be the most expensive player of them all, was Finchinator, who ended up going 1-2 in the first three weeks of NUPL. With a massive 31.5K price tag to live up to (the second most expensive player was 20K), and despite Kiyo's claims that it was worth it, his record didn't live up to his cost in the draft.

On a more positive note, -Davon, despite his fairly low cost of 5.5K, showed some real promise when he went 2-1 in his first three weeks, and more was going to be expected of him in the following weeks.

Highlight Match:

For the first featured replay, we have a match between two titans of the BW NeverUsed metagame, FLCL and Zebraiken. These two players were some of the best players during the time BW NU was the main tier for SPL and other tours, both of them with great Grand Slam and SPL showings. Despite efforts from Zebraiken during the first few turns, FLCL's Haunter is able to put too much pressure on Zebraiken's team and finishes off the game with Samurott, giving the win to the Jynxes.

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The Later Weeks

Week four was a fairly important week for a lot of the teams. This week decided which teams would have a chance at getting to the final and which teams would be eliminated. Before this week, every team still had a chance, no matter how slim, to get into the final. With the Krusty Krabs and the Vibrant Vivillons winning their set against the King Klangs and the Money Maker Musharnas, respectively, both the Klangs and the Musharnas were eliminated from the tournament, as they no longer had a chance at making finals. In an interesting series of events, the Rowdy Rampardos tied with the Jive Jynxes, which meant that the Vivillons had an astronomically small chance at making the finals (and the Jynxes now risked elimination before finals), if everything went their way.

The team with absolutely nothing to lose, the King Klangs, started out week five in what was perhaps the most questionable manner possible. Bringing relatively subpar teams that relied on Confuse Ray three games in a row (example here), they put the Jive Jynxes in an almost impossible 0-3 score after just two days, something that the Jynxes wouldn't manage to come back from. With the Jynxes unable to earn more points, the only hope they had left to reach finals was for either the Krusty Krabs or the Rowdy Rampardos to lose their respective series. However, with identical, convincing 6-2 victories against their respective opponents, they both won their weeks and each earned a spot in the final.

Highlight Match:

This game between Silver Aurum and Blaziken. is an interesting one. From Team Preview, there are some pretty interesting teams from both sides. The first thing that calls for attention is the Bronzor on Silver Aurum's side, a very unorthodox pick that hasn't been explored in NU at all for the most part but can be a solid answer to Grass- and Normal-types like Kangaskhan and Sawsbuck. There is also a big threat on Silver Aurum's side in Hitmonchan, as Blaziken. lacks a Fighting check on his team, which means Hitmonchan can basically get a kill every time it switches in with either Drain Punch, Close Combat, or Mach Punch. Silver Aurum uses this advantage throughout the match, and Hitmonchan manages to pick up several KOs and, combined with the rest of his team, puts a lot of pressure on Blaziken..

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The Finals

The two teams that reached the finals in the end were the Rowdy Rampardos and the Krusty Krabs. From the week where they fought each other, it appeared that the Krabs would have a slight advantage in this match, but both teams had showed that they had what it took to reach the finals, so this final could have been won by either team. The final lineup for the finals looked like this:

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The first game completed was between Finchinator and Heysup in DPP NU. The matchup came down to a roll which Heysup came out on top from, and he took home the first game for the Rampardos. bugzinator continued his undefeated streak against MetalGro$$ in BW and tied up the score. Evan. and 49 both lost their matches, which put the Krabs in a very favorable position at 3-1. Through two great performances, both idiotfrommars and -Davon won their respective games despite the pressure and tied the score at 3-3. When Ice Tea won the match against Sweep, everything came down to the ORAS game between Advantage and Blast, a game Blast had to win to get into a tiebreaker. With the help of a non-standard Lilligant set, Blast took home the last game of the set, which ended up tied at 4-4.

The tiebreakers consisted of ORAS, plus one tier from each manager, which ended up being ADV and BW. The lineups for the tiebreaker looked like:

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The tiebreaker started off with an intense game of ADV NU between innovamania and Heysup. In a game that came down to several RestTalk rolls and sleep turns, Heysup took home the first game of the tiebreaker. The following game was between Kiyo and Evan., the managers of the two teams facing each other for the first time in the tournament. Kiyo brought a stall team that had a very good match up against Evan.'s team, an advantage he used very well and took the tiebreaker into its final game. The last game of the tiebreaker, and all of NUPL, was a BW match between bugzinator and idiotfrommars, two players with some of the best records this NUPL (6-0 for bugz, and 5-1 for ifm). bugzinator had the lead early with Magic Coat Alomomola and Custap Golurk setting up a very favorable position for the rest of his team. Through a series of impressive plays, bugzinator kept his favorable position for the rest of the game, and with a final Thunderbolt he defeated idiotfrommars. In the end, the Krusty Krabs was the team that won this iteration of NUPL.

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Closing Remarks

The fourth installment of NUPL had its fair share of interesting moments, with teams predicted for playoffs losing out at the last possible moment, huge upsets in matches that should've been guaranteed wins for some, and a lot of team spirit being thrown around. The Krusty Krabs had an arduous journey to the finals but continuously proved, week after week, why they'd be a worthy winner of the tournament. Dedication, skill, and great teambuilding were all important to win it, and the Krabs showed every own of them. The NeverUsed Premier League continues to show just what makes it such an interesting experience for so many people, and its tradition will hopefully live on for much longer.

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Conclusion

Catch us later for a recap of DPL!

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