BIGs! What a season guys. It was a joy to be a part of this team. Interacting with old friends, meeting new people, and spending time together over the past months has been a joy. Many were skeptical to see us ranked #2 on power rankings, by the end here i feel we proved our ranking wasn't out of place. Dave and Windie, you guys did an exceptional job with this draft, both the power rankings and this result should confirm that. Key underperformances early in the season made it really hard to mount a comeback, but holy shit if we didn't almost pull it off.
Stone_Cold what can i say man. i cannot thank you enough for giving me a shot when nobody else was willing to. i don't know how much of the draft you vs windie did but my god what a draft. you had some amazing premier picks and some of the best pocket picks in the tournament. sometimes players under perform but that's life. i think there were a lot of things early on easy to criticize in this draft - and you were certainly criticized for many of them. 16.5k xray is quite a high price, but my god if he didn't dick down the whole ORAS tier. 17.5k flcl quite high, especially for a tier like BW, my god if that didn't work out wonderfully. your combination of premier players and cheap pocket picks made a really sound draft, and you should be very proud of your work here. for all of the shit i gave you throughout the season, managing properly is a hard position, and you did it wonderfully. thank you, sincerely, for giving me another shot.
Windsong you're not even on the team are you? windie, i find it really easy to relate to you, life gets fucking hard sometimes and i feel me and you are on the same wavelength with that. i hope the best for you, and again, congratulations on the success with this roster. thank you for your wise words and guidance throughout the season and I hope you are doing well. you and dave deserve all the credit in the world for threading together such a strong roster. hope you're well.
xray damn holy motherfucking shit, GOD SCANNER. xray you're a motherfucking beast man. before this tournament i've never been high on you, and to be honest I thought 16.5k was a high price to pay.. shit, for any player 16.5k is high. but after watching your preparation throughout the weeks, I can say with 100% surety that you are the best ORAS player on the website. your play is so thoroughly accurate, your builds are unique and planned out. blunder doesn't gas you for no reason. and to be honest man, blunder stopped playing ORAS the week tyrants vs bigs because he was scared to play against you. you're a fucking beast IRL too, it was awesome to see your snapchats throughout the season of beer pong and getting the ladies. i cannot say enough positive things about you man. thank you for slaying ORAS, thank you for testing SM, thank you for being a beast. BIG ups
Kushalos hey kush. i know nothing about your tier and i really did not want to influence your team choices or play in any way shape or form. if i talked to you more i was seriously afraid of making off-hand comments on your teams and fucking them all up. NU is your bitch and you handled it well.. you're super self sufficient and it was a joy to watch you lead the ship here.. solid consistent backbone of the team. i could have made an effort to get to know you better .. i was afraid of fucking something up
Nails jesus mother of god. if Lavos is the best player on the website (sorry gotta plug West), Nails you're second. i learned so much about the game just from spending time and talking with you. you're obviously very busy crushing VGC tournaments, playing other games, IRL meetups, I do appreciate the time we spent together playing gartic and our discord chats. it was eyeopening to get your view on the game and it's truly astonishing to think about the craziness and wildness of it all. thank you for taking the time to get to know me a little, it was a pleasure to get your take on the game and gain some understanding from that. you're an absolute beast of the player, and you have an insane understanding of gamestates and all of the possibilities going on in a game. you really could pick up any tier and quickly rise to the top. you're at the top of your game and you're a beast nails. it was a pleasure.
FLCL lowkey i've been wanting to team with you for five or six years now. when dave bid on me as the last player in the auction the kid inside of me went crazy. when i made the pilgrimage to smogon from PO, i watched the SPL players and their games. you were crushing NU at the time and were always sporting only the best anime avatars. you were the exact person i wanted to be .. i VMd you saying something like 'what's your favorite anime' and you dropped 'boku no piku'. i've always loved your sense of humor and god this gets gayer the more i type but I feel we are really similar people having grown up from a similar background. i've tried managing with you in the past, you were always taken .. i've just always wanted to team with you and it was a real pleasure for me. thank you for always being here??? how can i say this in a way that isn't gay. thank you for letting me use dance like you want to win during my OST run. thank you for recommending me shows that have become my favorites of all time. i really appreciate you fooly, and even if it was from a distance, I really loved teaming with you this year
Sabella oh god. as i mentioned early in the season, you've been an inspiration to me for current gen OU for quite some time. i've always loved your builds, and copied some of them for use on West. it was pure joy teaming with you this year. you're an absolute SM savant, you churn out builds so consistently and you're very in tune with the meta. thank you for taking me under your wing and letting me use your builds. some of the best times i had in this tournament were testing and wading through the amazing teams and ideas you had. i think this season cements you as a top SM player and people better start payin respect and homage to this young lord. you carried SM so hard when push came to shove. motherfuckers look out, Sabella is coming
UltraBallz really hard to mention Sabella without MagmaBallz. You and Sab churned out the best builds i've ever seen in this tier. you have such an eye for building man it's actually insane. You were building for four or five slots at one point. God, it's such a shame you don't live on West coast .. West would be stealing you in half a second. Really excited to watch you carry your WCOP team, kind of nervous if i'm honest. It will be a challenge to keep up with you. You are such an amazing team player. Such a solid builder, such a solid player. You've got an amazing eye at metagames and how to cover the most threads while building. I love your give-no-fucks attitude either - you are such a triple threat. Dude it was so nice to get to know you. Thank you so much for your consistent support and help in SM. as Sabella has already mentioned he appreciated your help this year and there's no way him or I could've done so well without you. Thank you UB
KingKdot impossible to mention the OU builders without giving you a shout. you were a super positive chat presence the whole season and helped bounce SM ideas and builds as well. i don't want to take too much away from sabella or UB but you did help loads with testing and building. thank you Kdot!
soulgazer blah blah blah, you've heard it all from me before. the first SPL i managed tigers i bought you immediately. you're such a consistent player, one of the players with the best SPL win percentage over time. you're such a ridiculously solid player. you've picked up countless tiers over the years, even random shit like RBY and had above average performances. when we traded sage away and weren't quite sure what we were going to do for UU, i was planning on picking up the tier and taking it on myself. i wanted to do what was best for the team and contribute the best i could. when you caught wind of this, you insisted on covering this weakness yourself to allow me to play a tier i was more comfortable in. this was a very selfless thing man and i really appreciate you evaluating the needs of the team and doing what you could to help out. Team Cancer Without ABR turned out to be a lie.. you've always been kind of a nice guy huh? Omfuga really was the problem child all those years ago. you've been a friend to me for years. thank you so much for that sg ;~;
Ezrael oh my god what a beast. this is the World Champion VGC player (runner up) if you plebians didn't know!! Jon you stepped up huge when it mattered. you're a professional and you deserve to be on the worlds biggest stages. Doubles is way too complicated for my monkey brain and I really respect and appreciate the talent and art you bring to your play. you're won huge amounts of money playing this game. you meet IRL people, make new friends and have real experiences. I sit at home on a computer monitor wasting my weekends. you're so amazing when you try .. and it was a pleasure to watch you do it
Golden Sun dude jesus christ. this is the motherfucking king of ADV right here. during the mock drafts before SPL i got this guy for 10k and thought it was the craziest steal of all time. BIGS picked him up for 3.5k seriously who is drafting these teams omfg this was such a ridiculous pick up. Golden Sun, you're one of the best to ever do it and when I was drafting for SPL years ago I could only dream of having you on my team. it was such a treat to test with you, and realize how much I don't know about the tier. You have a deep knowledge and understanding of the tier .. Thank you for bossing for us .. I hope to see you in future tournaments and I hope we can team again
sig daaamn, talking about budget picks. obviously i met you a long time ago, we had one brief conversation and i'm really surprised you remembered me and my ideas. obviously you're cool as fuck, a super cool rave party dude. you and i would get into some serious trouble if we met IRL, i feel .. I would suffer ego-death and probably never find my ego again. Which is cool. Psychedelics are great. You're a solid player and Dave was right to pick you up. Good luck on South .. Excited to watch your progression in the scene. Pleasure to see you again after all these years .. If you want to get into the anime industry lets make a show. Oh or any other industry!
KW ay thats my boy. thank you for all the SM tests. when john vs me wasn't going to happen i knew you were the best SM player we had on the bench. you've got a really solid understanding of SM tiers. i think when you're clicking fast the game is really flowing well, and you're following the game. maybe you get inside of your head when you play? maybe it was just an unlucky start. something weird was going on mentally in your RU games that just wasn't present when we were sparring in SM OU. maybe it's the pressure from the big stage .. all I know is that you're an excellent player and I know you can put up better results than you did here. thanks for being a good teammate even when dave finally subbed you out. you were helpful throughout the weeks and it's too bad you didn't get to crush pak. nice to meet you my dude
Googly it's hard man. it is so hard. dave picked me up with the understanding that I would have to fill in GSC a couple of weeks. choolio spent time teaching me a couple of things but that tier has so many intricacies i really feel i did not have enough practice in order to perform well against the top players. you're primarily a current gen player and I was painfully aware of that during the weeks you played GSC. you are such a trooper .. I have so much respect for you sticking it out in that tier when it's against the top competition. GSC really is a tier where the top players can stand out, because it takes such concentrated thought and deep understanding of common gamestates to pull off wins consistently. even when you went 0-2, you went in and got our first and only GSC win against Mr Numbers. i have deep respect for your resolve and sticking with it even though it was hard. choolio really is a piece of shit. or maybe he was actually busy who the hell actually knows. i wish I had the confidence to switch tiers with you .. i know you could have performed better than me in SM but i did what I was comfortable with. you did what you could for the team and i'm eternally thankful for that. thank you for covering our biggest weakness
Lunar. we teamed before on tigers .. we're assassin brethren .. always a pleasure lunar. super awesome to talk with you on call briefly and meet emily again! thank for you being such a positive team presence and being willing to do anything you were asked of for the team. you're definitely the nicest user on smogon.
choolio maaaaan really man. i'm thankful for the information and scouting you did previous to my game with conflict. you were doing your absolute best to teach me the tier and you wanted to watch me succeed. you put in a lot of work and i'm thankful for that. i'm sorry it didn't work out.. we watched the game back and you pointed out all of my mistakes. you're a wonderful, patient teacher, and I have deep respect for your knowledge of GSC as a whole. it's unfortunate you couldn't play more this season but it is what it is. hope you're doing alright .. too bad we couldn't fly closer to the sun.
Cased man i could slap you in the face for getting yourself banned. i was so hyped when we actually got you I knew it would fix some of out key slots and we would've had a more solid allaround roster. thank you for sticking around and helping where you could even after the ban. nice pull btw.. and thank you for your continuous humor and videos
Bushtush dude every team should have a bushtush. resident punching bag, easy target .. bush plays this part super well. but i owe a lot of my success this season to bushtush. when things go poorly IRL or i'm stressed out from work I have a tendency to shut down and stick to myself. i was having a particularly shitty week and REALLY did not want to deal with SPL or anyone else really. bush was the one to PM me and bully me until I was willing to respond and talk to another person! i'm not sure if you were aware tush but you pulled me out of a really dark place and helped me start talking with sabella and UB again and helped me beast. I'm really thankful for those PMs and the influence you had on the team. not sure how helpful your suggests actually were but your companionship and attitude really do add a lot to a team. just don't let anything get to your head .. when your ego flares it's too funny.. it will get you in trouble
God these shoutouts took a toll and I can't really think of any finals words. It was a super fun season and I'm thankful I had the opportunity to participate. Looking forward to the next big team tour .. WEST BEST!