approved by DugZa
inspired by other various interview projects across the site
art made by me
my pc broke and i lost the original file for the art, so no text edited on for a while, oops!
Hex
Drud
I really slacked on this series woops! After I posted the first interview with Platum, I had to move across states and then my PC broke at the same time so that was fun. Anywayyyy
For our second edition of Ghostly Gossip, we have Drud! He's a multiple time PUPL champ and did quite well in SCL. I couldn't think of a better candidate for this segment! Some fun facts: his favorite Pokemon is
and his favorite color is blue!
inspired by other various interview projects across the site
art made by me
my pc broke and i lost the original file for the art, so no text edited on for a while, oops!
I really slacked on this series woops! After I posted the first interview with Platum, I had to move across states and then my PC broke at the same time so that was fun. Anywayyyy
For our second edition of Ghostly Gossip, we have Drud! He's a multiple time PUPL champ and did quite well in SCL. I couldn't think of a better candidate for this segment! Some fun facts: his favorite Pokemon is
and his favorite color is blue!
Well this is absolutely long overdue when I meant to get this done in early January so oops! I'm sure the community would love to hear about PUPL winner, SCL farmer, and 40k in PUCL Drud. Why don't you start off by telling us about yourself and how you got into PS! / PU specifically?
Thanks for having me! I'm a 20 year old Dutch college student, in my first year of studying Psychology. I've been a Pokemon fan for as long as I can remember. I was 8 or 9? years old when I first stumbled across Showdown when just googling "Pokemon battles" or something. For the first couple years, I didn't actually interact much with the game itself but I used to just talk in the Dutch room where I got banned multiple times on my old account because I was a dumb and very young kid. In early 2016, I made my Smogon account and started actually playing the game. I was pretty awful at the game and mained DPP OU until about 2018, where I gave PU a shot. This was right around the time PUPL was starting and I started grinding the SM PU ladder. Despite me not really having played it before, I got drafted in that PUPL for DPP, not the tier I wanted but it was still a huge deal for me and the biggest tour I had ever been drafted to. I still wasn't a good player back then but I stuck with it and kept improving throughout the years.
Getting into Showdown that way is definitely interesting! I always thought Showdown fans mostly got into it from YouTubers or something when I was younger. Does that mean you got into Pokemon from Showdown specifically or did you play the cartridge games?
I was already a huge fan of the Pokemon games before that. I grew up with Gen 4 and 5 and was basically a superfan. I had all kinds of Pokémon merch when I was younger, played all the spinoffs, was into the trading cards, etc etc. I also used to play other online Pokémon browser games (like PokeHeroes, iykyk), and I ended up finding Showdown while looking for more of those.
PokeHeroes :sob: that's definitely a throwback. Never got into it myself but I'm aware of what it is LOL. One thing I've been curious about is your username "Drud". I know it's short for Druddigon / wild drud (was that your name? I can't remember oops). Is there any particular story about Druddigon you have to make it your username?
Well, my first online username was (my irl first name).pro7 or something like that, and I remember my parents told me (unrelated to PS stuff, they didn't know what i was doing) that I shouldn't post personal info on the internet. I then rebranded. Druddigon was one of my favorite Pokemon and I felt like everytime I heard someone talk about its design or whatever they were hating on it, so I wanted to represent it. So I changed my PS name to "Wild Druddigon" but then after a while i forgot the password and just started using "wild drud" instead since people just called me "Drud" anyway
That's a nice little story! I've always liked hearing about how people got their usernames, even if there's no story behind it. Online aliases sort of tend to become a second name for people when they are in so many communities. If someone called me Hex in real life for example I probably wouldn't be taken aback at all! Moving back to stuff about PU, how did the Mags franchise get started? Was it your goal to create a consecutive year franchise or was it something that just happened over time? Basically: what started it all?
The year prior (2020) I had just come off my first team tour win when I won PUPL with the Claydols led by TJ and Ktut (fun memories) with a 6-3 record and I felt like I had then established myself enough to give managing a try. Back then I didn't necessarily have plans to stick with managing, I just wanted to try managing PUPL one time. I didn't actually draft pdt but I traded for him during the draft because someone who I bought didn't want to be on my team. I had never interacted or talked to pdt prior to that PUPL, but his passion, alongside ManofMany who was also on the team, made a big impact on me.
We ended up losing in semis which was disappointing but it made me hungry for more, and the year after I retained pdt, managed with Many and bought Spitfire who would also end up as one of our core members. Even though I'm the one that started it, those 3 guys and their energy and the synergy we had is what made the franchise continue for years and I definitely wouldn't have kept it going without them.
Coming into PUPL 2025 then, what was that like? How did you all decide to band together once again and what was the pre-auction plan looking like? Any worries going into the tournament?
Honestly, not everyone was on board initially. pdt said he was busy and was considering not playing. The thing was that we won in 2023, and then missed playoffs for the first time altogether in 2024, and it would really suck to end on our lowest note yet. Telling pdt that made him play in the end anyway. That was our primary goal, making sure that if we did end the Mags after that year, we would at least go out with a bang. With pdt being busier and me wanting to try and break out in SV/modern gens, we agreed that I would be the Bo3 slot for the tournament, which I remember a lot of people outside of our team being sceptical of.
For our draft plan, the first objective as always was just to secure our group of guys, so selfbuying me and pdt, retaining BeatsBlack and then buying Spitfire in the draft. A big issue arose when Spitfire went for way more than we anticipated thanks to DD Joe's antics, I was honestly starting to hesitate when Spitfire was going for 25.5k, but pdt put in the bid and we got him. This made our vc genuinely mad for the whole rest of the auction. We thought we had lost the tour because we had just spent 75k on 4 players. We also wanted a high level SV mainer purchase, which ended up being kyuss for only 9.5k, which we were ecstatic about. With almost no money left, the rest of the roster was just players that we thought would be cheap but still could do well. Mostly pilots as for most gens we already have teambuilding support.
I will say during that auction I didn't think you guys would pull through after the Spitfire shenanigans. That being said, when I saw you guys scoop up kyuss and Skarpherim for dirt cheap I knew you guys were probably gonna be scary anyway. The name of the game in SV all gen has just been get cheap pilots and hope they perform.
I want to shift the magnifying lens onto your season in particular. I'm surprised to hear people were skeptical about you Bo3ing. I suppose comparatively I'm still "new" to the PU community so I don't know about much in terms of what tiers you know of/don't know of. Certainly you proved the doubters wrong. Could you take us through your own season personally? How prep was like or any ups and downs you noticed throughout the season in terms of growth? Any opponents you were wary of?
Before last PUPL I was still kind of known as a DPP one-trick, but I had won 2 PU Classics playoffs (also lost finals once and in semis another time), and I had also played SS and SM when they were current gen, so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into. For SV, I directed prep myself but kyuss and pdt did build multiple of my teams. For SS, it was pretty much just up to Spitfire to pass me whatever he wanted, as every time I suggested I figure out the prep myself, he insisted he did it. And NGL, that guy sabotaged me the whole season, giving me bad matchups and also waiting to give me my team until 5 minutes before the game when I ping him every day of the week, but he won his own games so it's okay. For SM I mostly figured out myself what to use, but Many helped me a lot there as well especially in the later weeks.
I was kind of worried that I was going to have to take over one of the old gen slots after a few weeks, but luckily I started out 2-1 after the first three weeks, meaning my teammates were fine with me staying in Bo3. Our team losing the first two weeks wasn’t great for my mental, and prepping Bo3 while also helping a lot of the team with their prep was definitely tough to balance. We eventually caught back up, but my individual performance was pretty inconsistent. I’d win one week and then lose the next, that same pattern repeated itself all the way until week 6. What surprised me the most was that SV ended up being my best gen, I expected SM to be my crutch, but my SM and SS records were both negative.
After we came back from 0-5 in week 6, when pdt had already made a post saying we were out, that’s when I really hit my stride. I won week 7 vs Pangoro, semis vs seraphz, the semis tiebreak vs LpZ, and my finals game vs zS all in a row, all games we needed. At that point I felt really confident, I was building my own SV teams, Spitfire was locking in more on support, and I had a much better idea of what worked for me in SM. I did end up losing my finals tiebreak game, but I got carried by my teammates anyway.
Well congrats again! Having to juggle being a manager while also playing a Bo3 slot specifically over a Bo1 slot is a ridiculously large amount of work so I'm sure the win felt especially satisfying! We're about to get shifts so this question is probably slightly obselete, but how did you feel about the PUPL meta compared to the meta right now? Also, whats your favorite meta of SV so far?
Thanks! I'm gonna be biased (because that's when I was doing well) and say my favorite meta was the late PUPL/early SCL meta that you're also asking me about. I slightly preferred the meta back then, because I liked to use the mons that we lost, like Espeon, Goodra, Articuno-G and Slowbro (though we did just get Slowbro back). I felt like we lost defensive mons that could make more progress as well as the Psychic-types that led to Pawmot and Tauros-Fire kinda being broken for a while (though that may change again with these shifts). There were also more hazard control options, I mentioned Espeon already but Frosmoth was also banned because we got Ninetales-A in shifts after that. That being said, this last meta was still pretty fun and I'm hopeful for this new post shift meta now that we have some good defensive pieces back in the tier.
I'm glad you brought that meta up since that gives me a great segue into my next few questions: Could you talk about SCL (pre-tour) a little bit? Maybe if you had any concerns about being undrafted, your feelings about playing SVPU in an official, etc.?
It was my main goal last year to get drafted into SCL, that's why I started playing more SV PU including in PUPL. I had never been drafted to an official prior to last year, which made sense because people saw me as a DPP PU player. My only experience with SCL was supporting eifo the year prior but to be honest I wasn't active or helpful at all. I hoped to go positive in WCOP as that would look good for my SCL chances, but I went 1-1 and then got lucked super hard in the last game to go 1-2, which does look uglier than 2-1. At the start of PUPL, I asked pdt to get me on whatever SCL team he ended up on, but that was a long time before the auction and we never talked about it afterwards so I thought he might forget. When signups went up, I reached out to multiple managers but I wasn't actually sure I would get drafted, I'm used to going undrafted in tours. Xrn/the Foxes nominated me but pdt made his team get me so I ended up on the Terrors for 7k. I honestly thought it would be like a huge moment for me that I got drafted, but I was more-so relieved than excited to be honest.
Getting drafted into officials is definitely a crapshoot if you aren't a huge name within the tours community for sure. How did you feel going into the regular season? Any particular prep mindsets you had about the tier at the time (like x mon is super broken lets abuse this)? How did your regular season go and what were some ups and downs?
At the start of the season, the main drive for me (alongside obviously wanting to win the tournament) was to solidify my starting spot. I figured that if i started off with some losses then Metallica, who was on our bench, would take over the PU slot. SCL week 1 coincided with my first week of college and I was already a bit burnt out from PUPL which just ended right before, but I was motivated to have a solid campaign, I didn't have any expectations beforehand (it wouldn't have surprised me if i just went winless into bench) but I would be happy with any neutral or better record, or just anything that would let me get drafted to future SCLs as well.
With prep it helped that we had multiple PU brains on the team, pdt helped me a lot early game and I had a blast prepping with him in vc, I used a couple of Metallica teams and DD Joe came up some stuff of his own as well and was very useful for getting me a lot of test games. My preferred play style is generally balance/BO, which I did use a lot of in SCL. I was always trying to have a good amount of variety in my builds. There were so many good offensive options that I preferred to be a bit more unpredictable in the builder rather than spamming whatever thought I was the most broken. For example, this tournament is where I realised that Pawmot + Zoroark was kinda broken, but I only used that combo twice, and neither time I even sent out my Zoroark to win which was kinda sad to me. Instead, I used a lot of different spike setters (Qwilfish-Hisui, Snowslash and Orthworm) and strong breakers to try and keep matches in my control by always having something that makes a lot of progress.
Around the time shifts came along was also when my mindset shifted. I was 4-0 when some pretty big shifts happened. But now that I was 4-0, I wasn't really playing for my starting spot anymore. We were also first in the standings at this point. Week 5 and 6 were the weeks I spent the most time prepping, trying to adapt to the shifts the best I could, DD Joe and the DD Jerk helped me get a lot of games and Joe was the main person helping me when shifts happened onwards. Heracross and Snow were both looking broken and a lot of the prep when they were in the tier was about how to beat them. With it not being clear if defensive teams were going to work in the new meta too, I ended up HO'ing for the first week post shifts, with this being my team: https://pokepast.es/bbf6079921c27bdf. I think it was a DD Joe team initially but I ended up changing sets and mons to fit my playstyle. Then I was 6-0 and at this point I was going to try to play for an undefeated season, just for me to lose the next week in a now infamous game. After that, our team also started struggling more and more and it was looking like playoffs was going to be difficult, but possible to still make.
I then also lost my week 8 game, and won week 9 (via timeout, although I do think I would've won in the end), and our team was one game away from tie-breaking for 4th, so even though I was 7-2 as a SCL rookie, if I just won one more game, we still could've done it and I did feel a bit responsible. Also, this is probably entitled and unjustified, but just because I lost 2 of my last games and we missed playoffs, the 7-2 record doesn't feel as satisfying to me in the end even though if you told me beforehand that I would go 7-2 in SCL I would be over the moon.
Ultimately, I did enjoy the SCL experience, I had a lot of cool teammates, I enjoyed working with all the PU support on the team and I thought our managers were great as well. Our team obviously did end up falling apart in the end and morale was low in the last few weeks, but overall I had a good time and I'm glad to have been drafted to the terrors.
Yea I know what you mean about the record still not feeling great if it makes you feel better. I think a lot of people including myself when they have a great season always want more when they look back it, which I think is good! It shows you have room for growth and you have a competitive spirit, which is what we play Smogon for! I wouldn't feel bad about not making playoffs -- you win and lose as a team after all.
I do have to ask though, while watching your SCL games and other games in the PU scene I noticed you retain a nickname scheme that's pretty similar throughout your games. Any fun/interesting story you can give us about why you use those nicknames?
I've always been superstitious about nickname use and whether I use shinies on my team or not. There is no logic about it but sometimes I feel like either i'm winning all my games with nicknames or I'm losing with them so I have to swap to no nicknames for a while and so on. For years I've made nicknames out of songs and artists (I mainly just listen to rap) to express myself a bit. I've had a few games where I used nicknames of BigXthaPlug and Ro$ama, who are two rappers i'm a fan of that often collaborate, Tony Coles, who's their producer and The Biggest / The Largest which is a song by BigXthaPlug. I didn't do it often but then I started noticing I won more often when I used those nicknames and it all accumulated when I beat JustFranco with those nicknames in World Cup, in which he went 8-1 if you include the Qualifiers. That's the one of the wins i'm most proud of in my Smogon "career". After that game I just started spamming those nicknames and it kind of became a trademark for me.
I thought I was the only one who was weird about shinies :sob:. Well, thanks for taking all your time with me to answer these questions! I really appreciate it and it was certainly a great read. Before we close out are there any people you want to give a particular shoutout to?
I wanna shoutout all the core Mags pdt Spitfire ManOfMany for being a great group of friends who I will always treasure even if the Mags are done, especially BeatsBlack for being my best friend on this site and always being down to help me with whatever (anything but responding to DMs) and same with TheKingKarp (please come back..). Also shoutout to the core Frees TWiTT Jett and I suppose also the snake clean for also being a great group of people to team with for years. I'm not gonna name everyone else individually because that would be way too much but even though I've been a PU mainer for years and years now, I always felt like a bit of an outsider when it came to the community until recently, so I want to thank everyone that has been nice with me either in the PU discord or in a side server, as well as any longterm friends I have from ZU/PU, you know who you are, as well as most people (unfortunately not everyone..) that have been on the Mags before.
That concludes our second edition of Ghostly Gossip! Again thank you to Drud for giving me his time here and I'm glad to have been able to get this out. Hopefully at a much more consistent rate now that I've settled in and gotten back into the groove of things. The thread will remain open as per usual for these threads if anyone would like to ask Drud questions! Until next time :3!