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Its that time again! Worked on 4 avatars this year
Foxes
I did one for the foxes last year, this time around I ended up making both! Sprites by the goat Kyledove, custom ninetales sprite & trainer edits by me
Islanders
Similar to the foxes but in a different way, I did this year's male sprite for the Islanders using one of my Eggy sprites from last year, as well as a funny looking Wake
Dynamos
And last but not least, a sprite for the Dynamos. Using their tried and true GZap sprite made by Brumi, with Elesa in her newest outfit from Masters made by yours truly.
woooooo SCL time again!!
I got to work on a bunch of avatars this year and as always I'd like to thank deetah, sharpclaw, Irpachuza, RADU, Turtleye_ and especially Altthiel who helped me so, so much when I didn't have time to (especially for Gibles avatars)
Studio Gible
I got to work on Gibles' avatars this year, once again with huge help from Altthiel
The Volo sprite was made by Brumi, and I made both Gible's and Dreepy's sprites from scratch
Power Plant Dynamos
If you ask me, Dynamos are the hardest avatars to get done each year because topping what Brumirage made a few years back is pretty much impossible
Thank god, Turtleye did an insane job at it this year, and I was able to use parts of his work on this one
The Guzma sprite was made by kyledove, and the Gapdos sprite was once again made by Conyjams
Showdown Shoguns
Huge HUGE thanks to Turtleye for allowing us to use this gambit sprite, and RADU for all the help on the female avatar (especially for that one unused version LOL)
Red-Masters sprite by kyledove, Kingambit sprite by Turtleye (from blunder's avatar, thanks to him as well for letting us use it)
I'll do a longer post whenever I have time but I was late to post LOL
I wasn’t as able to contribute this time around, so grateful—and blown away by their work!—as always to Clem, deetah, RADU, Irpachuza, and Turtleye_. Way to go team!
Uncharted Terrors
M - (Adaman) by Brumirage, recolor by me
F - (Drasna) by Gnomowladny, recolor by me
Gyarados by me
A bit late, but here's a bit of an "SCL Preview" post! The concept is sorta like what they do before the playoffs in American sports leagues where they list all the best/longest tenured players without a championship, so that's what I'm doing here, just a bunch of players according to various criteria, players without the SCL green trophy and without any trophy at all, competing for one of them this tournament. (p.s. managers count too, but they were slightly more annoying to search through so they get italicized)
First, the most obvious of these to me was "players with the most sheet wins." The list of players in this tournament without an SCL trophy, ranked by sheet wins, is as follows:
1. Finchinator (119)
2. ABR (88)
3. watashi (87)
4. Nails (86)
5. Punny (85)
Next, we'll ask the same question, except this time the leaderboard is organized by sheet differential rather than total wins. A few names stay the same, a few turn over.
1. ABR (+43)
2. Punny (+29)
3. Finchinator (+27)
4. Santu (+23) 5. lax (+22)
5. Star (+19)
This is neat, but lumping all the team tours together obscures some of the interesting details here; after all, who's to say all these players regularly play SCL? Here's the list of players in this tournament without an SCL trophy, ranked by SCL/Snake Draft wins:
1. Punny (42)
2. Finchinator (41)
3. Kushalos (39)
4. Nails (37)
5. robjr (33)
And this same question, but ranked according to SCL/Snake Draft sheet differential:
1. Punny (+22)
2. Nails (+18)
3. Scottie (+12)
4. Sacri' (+11)
4. MichaelderBeste2 (+11)
With all of that laid out, I'll then ask the same questions, but instead of looking for the top players without an SCL green trophy, ranking players with no trophy at all. The players in this tournament without any trophy at all, ranked by sheet wins:
1. Kushalos (62)
2. Sacri' (58)
3. Gilbert arenas (51)
4. Scottie (43) 5. Mana (35)
5. Xrn (34)
5. TheFranklin (33)
Same question, but according to sheet differential instead of total wins:
1. Attribute (+15)
2. Scottie (+14)
2. TDNT (+14)
2. hellom (+14)
5. Sacri' (+13)
Now, trophyless players in this tournament, sorted by SCL/Snake Draft sheet wins:
1. Scottie (29)
2. Sacri' (25) 3. Feliburn (23)
3. Accel (21)
3. TheFranklin (20)
3. GXE (20) 4. Xrn (17)
4. Icemaster (15)
4. Danny (15)
And one last one, listing trophyless players in this tournament by their win differential in SCL/Snake Draft games specifically:
1. Scottie (+12)
2. Sacri' (+11)
3. Kushalos (+7)
3. GXE (+7)
3. Lokifan (+7) 3. Xrn (+7)
There are a few more neat topics I want to cover. First of all, some of my previous posts have highlighted the players to win each of Smogon's three team trophies, a group that currently consists of SoulWind, BIHI, elodin, Tace, and S1nn0hC0nfirm3d. The following players can join that club this year with a team win:
Breakers: ABR, Kebab mlml
Foxes: Punny
Platoon: Nails, robjr
Shoguns: lax
Most of you probably knew, whether you've ever thought about it or not, that no player has won both the SCL/Snake Draft green trophy and the Masters purple trophy (given that Empo and MDB would be the only possibilities). What many people may not have realized is that no player has won both the SCL/Snake Draft green trophy and the OST yellow trophy in their careers. As such, the list of players who can pick up a unique two-trophy combination this tour is as follows:
Three players in this tournament have multiple individuals trophies and no SCL trophy, those being Santu with 2, MichaelderBeste2 with 3, and ABR with 4. Expanding this list to include players with multiple individual finals, we can also consider Punny, Lax, and Giannis Antetokommo-o here. Is this interesting? I don't know! The point here is just to indicate other ways to think about the question of "who are the good players without a trophy at this tournament who are potentially due."
So tl;dr here is my approximate ranking of SCL teams this year based on "who has the most accomplished players looking for a big trophy here," formulated by adding up everyone who ended up on one of these lists. If you are used to the sports experience of your team getting knocked out of the playoffs early and choosing instead to cheer for teams with some 40 year olds taking one last shot or for a young superstar to get their first, this may be for you! Does this ranking seem wrong, that there are other players more "deserving" that aren't on here? I mean yeah, sure, the criteria are all arbitrary anyway, follow your heart.
