Approved by 5gen & S1nn0hC0nfirm3d | Amazing Art by Albatross
(Interview Date: 22nd of September 2021)
Hello everyone and welcome back to "ZU Player of the Week"!, the project where some of ZU's finest community members are interviewed about their Pokemon and personal lives. I am grateful that I have already had the chance to interview so many amazing ZU players and I hope that you'll continue to enjoy these as much as I do. For this week's interview, we have a ZUPL manager who has had promising performances in recent tournaments...
Drud!!
Favourite Pokemon:
(PU +, PU Tutor, To Pimp A Butterfree Manager and SS Player, Classic Finalist, Ladder Tour Finalist, No John's Semi-Finalist)
Ditto used Transform!
Ditto transformed into Hydreigon!
*hy drei gon*
Hey Drud, how are you?
Hey I'm doing pretty well though I overslept this morning and was late to class but whatever, thanks for asking, hope you're doing well too.
Ah lmao, hope it wasn't that important. I'm also doing well thanks. To kick things off, do you mind telling us a bit about yourself?
I'm a 16 year old high school student from the Netherlands, my hobbies are playing video games, playing and watching basketball. I'm mainly a PU player but I've been moreso playing other tiers recently (ZU being my most played).
Very nice introduction. How did you first get or what first got you into ZU seeing as you're a PU main?
I had an off week somewhere earlier this year and I was bored so I qualified for both the ZU and NU ladder tournaments that week with random samples for both, then I played the ZULT playoffs with random teams I stole from forums for the first half and pdt teams for the second half and managed to get to the finals, after that I joined a few more ZU forum tournaments and I put up some more good results. Before ZUPL I hadn't played a ZU game outside of forum tours but when the tour started I started playing it often and I honestly like the tier a lot, definitely more than all the other SS tiers.
Glad you've stuck around for a while after as well. As you've said you've done well in a lot of ZU tours, and while you've been rather unfortunate to not win one yet, I think you're still considered by many to be an amazing player; what do you think contributes to do that?
I wouldn't call myself amazing but thanks lol, I think a lot of my skill comes from a lot of experience just playing the game. One of the things that I think has helped me in these ZU tournaments is that a lot of the ZU mainers I see playing bring passive teams and/or play too passive and when you play aggressive it becomes pretty easy to abuse.
Modest as well haha. That makes a lot sense for sure, hopefully we'll see you win one in the near future.
After playing and building in several of these tours, do you have a favourite gen of ZU?
Recently had a discussion about this in the ZU discord, SS is my favorite: It has a lot of bulky offense and balance which I like the most playing with and against. It also feels pretty balanced even though some offensive threats are pretty annoying to prepare for like Rotom (Electric immunities for Volt Switch feel hard to fit sometimes) and CB/BB Sawk since it hits so hard. My second favorite is probably DPP since it feels pretty varied in terms of teams and it's a nice and fast paced compared to SS for if that's more your thing. My main problem with DPP is that some of the mons are just not fun to play against like sub tox protect Lapras/Walrein. I have the same problem with ORAS because Regigigas is very common and when you see that mon at team preview you just know it's gonna be boring.
Oh I must have missed it so thanks for restating it here. That's a pretty cool take and one I can get behind. Definitely will be intrigued whether anything will be done about the mons you brought up once the PL is over.
Speaking of ZUPL, what drew you into signing up as a manager? How has your overall experience in the tournament been like?
I managed in PUPL (my team got knocked out in semis) and had a blast doing so, I originally told some of my friends I was gonna signup as a ZUPL manager as a joke but ended up actually doing so close to the deadline because managing is fun and I wanted another chance to win a team tour as manager after getting eliminated in PUPL. I went into the auction without a draft plan, all I know is that I planned to buy my friends zS and pdt who I both bought in PUPL also, unfortunately they both underperformed in ZU but it's all cool, they're both great players regardless and I don't regret buying them. To no one's surprise I bought mainly PU/Tour players which I sorta regret later, In hindsight I should've bought a mainer that can build well but at the time I wasn't comfortable spending a lot of money on a ZU mainer and thought the combination of pdt + me would be good enough for SS teambuilding. Now we're 4 weeks in with only 2 points which is definitely not the result I was hoping for but I'm satisfied with how I did as manager and I've had plenty of fun. Even though our team chat was mainly just me and Greybaum, I thought we had a pretty nice team environment. Last place is looking likely for us but you won't hear me complaining about how the tour went. In terms of my own individual performance, I'm 2-2 right now for 10k (didn't get drafted for last year's ZUPL lol pretty sure I did sign up last year but none of the managers knew who I was) and I'm not entirely satisfied with how I've been playing even though a win over kay is a pretty good look.
Oh haha, it was actually good to see that you signed up given how many returning managers there were so the potential for a new manager to come along and win is always fun. I definitely think that there is definitely a balance to drafting friends and mainers and hopefully you'll have more success next time around if you do consider signing up again. You also still have time to go positive this week so maybe you'll be happier with how things turn out for yourself in the end.
Which players have you been surprised by/impressed by the most so far?
That's a good question, some of the players I've noticed that have been playing well consistently are Heysup, Louna, Ho3nConfirm3d, Luck O' The Irish, daniYSB, 5gen and TheFranklin. From my own team, I've been impressed mainly by sensei axew and DnB, I know they're solid players so it doesn't surprise me that they've been doing well.
great great
Last question on PL, it's pretty early on in the week still (Wednesday when interviewed); which teams do you think make playoffs and which team do you think will win it all?
Pretty sure the Flamencos are guaranteed to be in and basically guaranteed to be the first seed, they look like the strongest team and if they continue to perform like they have in the regular season they're very likely to win the whole tour. I think Hakamo-o's have a decent shot and I'm rooting for them as they seem like underdogs at this point (well every team except the Flamenco's seem like underdogs). The Hakamo-o's have a lot of players I respect and if they stop underperforming like they have in week 3 and 4 I can see them taking it all.
It'll be interesting to see whether playoffs spices things up
A few questions about yourself now. Aside from mons, what kinds of games do you enjoy playing?
Currently I'm trying out a lot of different games because I bought an actually good laptop instead of the terrible one I had until a few weeks ago, some games that I've consistently enjoyed throughout the years are Minecraft, Smash Bros and Mario Kart.
That's pretty neat, and nice, classic games are always fun
As for basketball, do you play on a team at all or just for fun and who are your favourite players/teams to watch?
Nah I only play pick up games and practice with friends a few times a week, being on a team and training on a consistent base isn't for me. I'm a Lakers fan and my favorite player is LeBron but that's too basic of an answer, I'm also a big fan of Devin Booker and Jayson Tatum.
I see, good answer.
Next, I wanna ask what genre of music/artists do you normally listen to?
I listen to almost exclusively rap/hiphop, like 70% of the time I'm listening to music, I'm listening to Kendrick Lamar. Other rappers/groups I like a lot are J Cole, Kanye, Don Toliver, Tyler the Creator, Migos, Brockhampton
That's a pretty good taste in music; in my opinion anyways.
A more interesting question now, who would you say is the most annoying user in ZU?
Good question, I thought it the interview lacked it so I asked Greybaum it during his interview. It's Durza. Second place goes to OranBerryBlissey10
I could have never guessed it would have been durza given the fact he has definitely not pinged throughout of this PL so far.
Interesting to see that OBB10 is second, any reasoning for this :o
Idk I saw some of his messages in the ZU discord and he just seemed cocky and annoying or that one ZUPL winpost where he said "thanks for predicting against me" which just seems very petty
Ah very understandable, ye predicts are more so for fun anyways, people get worked up on them too much despite there not being ill intent behind them
We come to the end of this interview now with the usual two questions left, the first one being: is there a team you'd like to share with us?
I used this
in my ZUPL w3 game against Hitmonstars (Battle Replay) and it's probably my favorite team I've made for this ZUPL. Main idea behind the team is to break with Thievul while trying to clean up with Rotom/Dugtrio-A after. While it has a good defensive core, you need to play aggressive with especially Thievul in order to win your games with this because if you're too passive. you're gonna fall behind. Thievul and Dugtrio-A are both great offensive mons that I don't see get used a lot, Scarf is one of Rotom's worse sets imo (still a good set but still) but it fits well here so I just went with it. The electric immunity is Duggy-A which doesn't love to take non electric moves from Rotom/Raichu so you're gonna have to get your reads right to not get steamrolled by Volt Switch but still keeping your Dugtrio alive. All in all it's a fun and good team but it's not one you can always win with on autopilot.I really liked this team when I first saw it since it had Duggy-Alola, which as you said isn't used very often. I love how deceptively easy it looks as a team given it's hazard stack with breakers but it looks really well put together. Thanks for sharing it!!
Finally, do you have any last remarks or shoutouts you'd like to make?
I'd like to give a quick shoutout to everyone on my ZUPL team, especially Greybaum for being the 2nd most active person by quite a big margin. Even if most people weren't that active I still appreciate everyone being a part of the experience. Other than that I'd like to shout out the people who I've tested with for this tour, yet weren't on my team like Tuthur, S1nn0hC0nfirm3d, kay, Apagogie (I probably forgot multiple people). Thanks for everyone involved with ZUPL for making it a fun experience. Also shoutout to you for interviewing me. That's basically it
Awesome, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions :)
Feel free to ask to Drud any questions you want!
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