It only took us the entirety of the RR but it's finally time for some
eulogies, blobby-style! Without further ado, let's get started with the team that ended up on the last place of them all, the
Seafoam Goodras.
-The draft:
The goodras had a playing manager to draft in the second half: Poison Adhesive. Having PA as playing manager over mudkip already seemed wierd to me, considering mudkip had a good LC winter SSNL run, reaching to R10 (top 8) after getting the act win over Gareth Adamson in R9. Granted, this was roughly two and a half months before BLT Week 1 started, but it was still more than PA had accomplished in official SS tiers.
They started off their draft by getting Stareal and ToastedBunzzz02. Both were doing well in their respective tiers, with Stareal reaching Top 8 of OU Stour Tour and Bunzzz getting Top 8 in NULT. Next they picked up xSkelly34. Skelly isn't really maining anything afaik and the price might have been a little bit on the high side but he's still versatile enough to slot into any tier if needed so it's not an overpay. The goodras finished their roster off with parivard, making an absolute madlad play and bidding 10K immediately after they nommed him. After the first part of the draft, the goodras had spent the most money and also had one of the better rosters so far. They had a good OU and NU slot, a wildcard that could fill any gaps they might have had, and a pretty alright LC'er. Now they just needed to fill in the rest of their roster with some good players and they'd be in great contention for playoffs.
After drafting PA, the goodras dropped another brain play on the other teams by going an insta 20K on SMB after they got nommed. All the other teams were either laughing too hard, weren't looking or simply didn't care but as a result they got SMB as an actual fucking steal are you kidding me. SMB was still the fifth most expensive player but holy fuck 20K was cheap. With the money they saved using that maneuver, they expanded their roster with Decem, GunGunJ and gorex. Decem was a fine monotyper who didn't want to play monotype, which made the purchase a risk considering there are better mains for the other tiers where Decem would struggle to compete with. GunGunJ was another versatile-ish pick who did alright in OU SSNL and showed potential to become really great. gorex' results in other tours shaped him up to be an amazing player who would be a very strong opponent in the lower tiers. Rounding out the squad were SolarFlareRO (no big SS standard tier experience in tours, but a tours room mainer who could probably surprise a few faces), SiceXV (got to R6 of Mono SSNL, for 3K this was a pretty good pick), and LittleSpookz (I don't have any info on this person).
All in all, the goodras had a fine draft. They were one of my dark-horse teams to win the tour, and in my super secret BLT powerranking (read: PM to TWW) I put them in the top 3. They didn't really seem to have any redundant players and almost all of them had potential to take down the big dudes in every tier. For me, the goodras would cruise to the playoffs if they placed their players right.
-The tour:
IF they placed their players right ...
This hurts my eyes.
Yeah, keeping players in one tier wasn't really what the goodras went for. The average player on the goodras played 2 different tiers. Fine by me if it's for like two or three of your more versatile players, but Not. For. The. Entire. Roster.
Going from top to bottom, we start with Bunzzz, who played NU and UU. This is already wierd to me, as it seems mindless to keep your strong NU player in NU. It became more confusing to me because Bunzzz only had to make way in NU when skelly played it. (Sice played it W7 but the goodras weren't serious during that week.) Don't get me wrong, I like skelly, but it is way more logical to throw skelly into the UU ring and keep Bunzzz playing in NU. Regardless, Bunzzz managed to win every UU match he played + deadgame vs GXE, against competent opponents in ORAS-Mega and TreeckoMaMan/TMM. NU appeared to be pretty stacked and that translated in his 2-2 record in that tier as well. This is where the list of positive records stops.
SMB had a very disappointing BLT, with no notable victories at all. Losses in DOU against shadowmonstr and TTT hurt, and the win against LTG was to be expected. There were strong rumors about SMB only wanting to play RU this BLT, and this actually happened. The only thing of note here is that he at least went positive (2-1) in RU. Moving onward to the 2-2 gangs, all have different stories to tell. Skelly had a poor start but made up for it in the end, but didn't play any big names outside of Skipkan and the meme that was negatory in DOU. Solar had some of the biggest names to fight against and for him to go neutral is pretty impressive. The wins against arce9 in RU and mishi in DOU came out of the blue and could have solidified Solar as an all-round talent. Then after these two W's he got benched fsr, only to lose twice in a row to Feliburn in RU and bandrizzlelol/henguinie in OU. Sice didn't had an exciting BLT, with expected W's, an expected L against Floss and a rollercoaster of a match against saba1111 (hatterenes still love you <3).
Parivard had a good start, but didn't win against some of the more significant names in the LC pool and went negative because there were a lot of 'em. Decem lost to TectonicDestroyer W1, got thrown into OU for 3 weeks for a negative record, and then finally went on to play monotype and end neutral there. Decem was subject to "Dartboard-syndrome", which would be how the managers of the goodras decided who played where. Decem in OU seems like a big no-no for me when you look at the other OU mains, and as a manager I'd either pressure them into playing monotype regardless, or just let them get a tier to main so they can learn the meta and get better in it as the weeks go by. Stareal disappointingly enough went negative, but had to play against a lot of players who would be deemed better than him based on their skill and experience.
PA ... played once wtf? What is the point of a playing manager if they only play once!? That's one way to waste a slot I guess. This just strenghtens my confusing about why PA and not mudkip was the goodras playing manager, or why they didn't just decide to not take a playing manager like the bolts did. LittleSpookz played twice and will probably have a big confidence boost after taking down Electric Win. Finally, we have the other Dartboard-syndrome victims in gorex and GunGunJ. Yikes, nobody likes seeing 24K in total go 0-9, but from a manager point of view both of these seem so wrong. They both lost their first match in what I would think is their strongest tier against better players (Mac3 went on to become the best RU'er and Twixtry the best OU'er). After that, they both get benched and the week afterwards put into a tier where they're not the best choice for the goodras. Both their original tiers were occupied by players that imo had no reason being there (SMB in RU / Decem in OU) but similar to ToastedBunzzz02/xSkelly34 in NU, the non-mainer seemed to be given the preferred treatment here. It's almost no wonder that they went winless then. Most of the players they faced were already on a streak and two people playing what isn't their strongest tiers weren't gonna stop them. Honestly, It's really sad that these two went winless because they deserved more.
-Verdict:
The goodras had a good draft which was absolutely demolished by wierd player placement. Sad/10
After Week 7 concluded, PA and I had a small discussion about the goodras, and he told me that most, if not all the time, the players chose where they wanted to play. So every wierd slot would be explained by this. PA said he wanted his team to most of all have fun in the tour, instead of pressuring them into tiers they do not prefer just because they play best there. Honestly, I can't fault a manager for wanting his team to have fun, but if you put fun over results, you shouldn't be surprised you didn't make playoffs.
That's it for the Goodra's eulogy! Stay tuned for the Alakazams and Snoms coming tomorrow.
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Moving 1 spot up the final ranking are the
Black City Bolts.
-The draft:
The Bolts were the only team without a playing manager. Looking at the managers it wasn't hard to reason why. Glacierider didn't play mons at a competitive level at all, and while lkapkd is a tours room resident, having to pay 12.5K for him would have been a big overpay. There was a bunch of talent or just straight up high-caliber players in the pool so this wouldn't necessarily be that bad.
In the first part of the tour, the bolts were up to nominate a person as third team. The hatterens started off with their mandatory playing manager gxe, the rufflets nommed kythr, and the bolts ...
%Lkapkd: .nom richardpepper and bought him.
What? Are you kidding me? It made no sense to nom richard already here. No shade against him since he's not bad, but there were a myriad of high quality players available to be nommed: imjustgray, toastedbunzzz02, jeran, GW, Blimax, cheese, Z strats to name the most expensive players the other teams bought after richardpepper was nommed. Even from a "I want richardpepper"-strategic point of view this doesn't make sense, as he isn't someone who would get nommed in the first round. You could nom other players, filling the guaranteed slots of the other teams, and then nom richard later on to ensure other teams would have to use one of their last few remaining slots to buy him, which they might want to use for other players. I guess if I have to find a good reasoning for this It'd be that you catch teams off-guard and they don't want to spend a guaranteed slot on a player they're not interested in yet in favor of the players I've just named, maybe scared that it will interfere with their drafting plans, and that tactic itself can nab you a decent player for a cheap price. If this was actually what the bolts were going for, I'd applaud the tactic itself. I can't really applaud it being used on richard, sorry.
Moving onwards, they picked up MalMoonsault and PokemonCestDur for a combined price of 18K. Both are fine but the combined price felt a bit too high in my opinion. Mal struggled with qualifying and while Pcd is decent, the RU pool seemed too strong for them to handle. They ended their guaranteed draft with halaman95, while there was more than half of the guaranteed pool still left to choose from. It seemed the Bolts had a very clear draft plan, albeit an equally wierd one.
In the second part of the draft, they started things off by buying Trade and Mikaav. Trade was coveted by at least two other teams and seemed to be a very competent allrounder. Meanwhile, Mikaav was Top 2 LC, so the Bolts' roster increased greatly in potential. Then they got snofall, a lower tiers player on who you can usually rely upon to go at least neutral. Following up was ... Samspark? I mean, they still didn't had a DOU'er and if you wanted to cut costs in that tier I guess you could do worse than Samspark, but Sam wasn't seen for quite a while so to actually locate them and have them play was a bit of a gamble. It costed 3K so if it failed not too much was lost. They got negatory afterwards who's also decent in lower tiers, and then a big opportunity started to form: the bolts had 41K left and needed to draft 3 players. That's an average of roughly 14K for each player. There were still over 30 players left in the pool and with them having the largest budget and being tied for the least amount of players to still pick up, they could get whoever they wanted.
In the immediate next nomination they lost the bidding war for Electric Win at 15K against the hatterenes who had 11K less than them what the fuck happened here? They could have easily outbid the hatterenes who needed 3 players as well. They could have bid 24K, see how the hatterenes can't overbid that since then they won't have the required 3K minimum for their 2 remaining players, and the bolts would still have 17K lying around to spend on two players WTF WAS THIS STRATEGY! They were up for nomming afterwards and got t0te for 3k because nobody was paying attention. But then, an even larger opportunity started to form: they now had 38K and 2 players to draft. There were still players in the pool that were great on paper, like Mac3, Bad Player and NRTS, so they could almost literally point at two qualifiers, say "I want those" and the other managers kinda had to give up.
For some reason they stopped bidding on acselsior at 5K when he went for 6.5K, meme upbid themselves on Miyan from 6K to 10K, lost the bidding war for PrinceOfAllTacos at 11.5K (they had 28K left and needed 1 more player), and finally bid 15K on Velvet Blood I'm done. I can't handle this shit anymore. Take me to the next paragraph.
In the end, Samspark didn't play, so they got the last two players from the undrafted pool (after Hatterenes took EpicBoost) in giove97 and Dom12887. Their team was alright at best and that was immediately a huge problem. If this was BLT V or VI it might have been a contender for top half, but still not an actual winner. Compare that to BLT VII and you had a team that stood last in every of the powerrankings, including mine.
-The tour:
When you're just looking at the final results, this is within expectations of where the bolts were expected to end up. But despite losing over half of their weeks, they were pretty close to playoffs, way closer than one would initially think. So how did this happen? To start things off we have to look at the two postive records for the Bolts, which were Trade and Mikaav. Directly after the draft these two and snofall were already seen as the ones that should have to salvage the bolts, and truth to be told, they did pretty well at that. Trade didn't play W1, but won literally every game they touched, in 4 different tiers to boot. almost all of those were against strong mainers. Mikaav won the first 5 weeks as well, but lost the last 2. These two gave the bolts a guaranteed 2-0 advantage in weeks 2-5, meaning that from the other 6 slots just 2 had to win to at least get a point. Oddly enough for almost everyone, this was doable.
MalMoonsault (APW001) enjoyed a 3-0 streak over the first 4 weeks of BLT, getting good wins against tempering and roginald, as well as beating GunGunJ. Unfortunately, this was counteracted by a 0-3 losing streak in the last 3 weeks against opponents which on paper were clearly stronger. RichardPepper also enjoyed a 3-3 neutral score (very good for 4K) in monotype, beating the likes of maroon and dugza as most notable opponents. halaman95 also did well with 2 upsets against NRTS and keeping it icy. Combine this with Trade+Mikaav and you have a good chance to at least tie a matchup.
snofall unfortunately struggled a lot with the UU pool and had to sport a negative record. I honestly think others were more in touch with gen8 uu than snofall was. Miyan's record didn't impress either, but at least they had 2 upsets in Bad Player and confide as well. negatory in DOU is just oof, and the wins weren't something out of the ordinairy. As expected, pcd struggled in RU against the strong opposition in the tier. Finally, we have 4 players which only played once and lost that match (including 15K velvet blood WTF BOLTS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU). Velvet lost unsurprisingly to cheese in week 3, and Dom, t0te and giove were fed to the Swamperts OU core + monotype in week 2.
While the question "Why were the bolts succesful" might be the most obvious one, the explanation is pretty boring. The monster scores against the Snoms and Hatterenes kept them floating, but outside of that nothing spectacular happened. So let me ask a question that would fit the bolts more: "Why
didn't they make playoffs?" After 5 weeks, they had 5 points and were 4th on differential, and they had a good chance to defy everyone's expectations, but they were unlucky in their final two matchups: the alakazams and the rufflets. Both of these teams had a killer momentum swing toward the end of the season, going from only L's, to T's to W's in that order. It seemed that those two teams finally got their act together, and were sweeping through the opposition. The bolts didn't stand any chance against this and if they had fought those two teams earlier on, they might have finished top 4.
-Verdict:
In total contrary to the goodra's who had a good draft but bad tour, the bolts showed how far an arguably subpar draft could take you. However, the final two weeks showed that most of the players on the bolts weren't of a caliber to keep on winning when facing teams featuring players that could. Way in the future, when only the results are remembered, their positioning as 7th will look normal, but for now, they still shook up BLT. Pretty Impressed/10
Zams + Snoms tomorrow!
--> We have a thought for the 
--> With their 2 meter high and 150 kg, the 
--> Having shown great power and enormous speed, the Zebstrika were able to win against their opponent, creating lightning and rain in order to electrify them on the spot. Thank you for your participation and a thunderous applause for the Black City Bolts !
--> Endowed with an extraordinary intelligence, you knew how to enter this tournament and show the power of your mind, Thank you for your participation and a thunderous applause for the Azalea Alakazams ! 
)
