SplatStats Season 2 Final Report
Part 2e: Rank 30–26
Shomona Games may be one of the weaker Japanese teams on this list, but their early starts in the Season earned them a strong stop in the Top 50. This is one of the few teams who continued to run double N-ZAP along with Libalent Calamari after the general Japanese scene were figuring out ways to combat the double Ink Armor composition which was so common at the time.
The team at the moment is in a strange limbo. The main accounts used for this team have gone quiet. Meanwhile MooM, their marquee player, has been seen playing with other Japanese pickup teams. Instead, let us remember how this teams has become a sort of gatekeeper for the Western scene. Teams able to defeat Shomona could be the stepping stone needed to break into the Japanese scene as a whole.
Extermination has had the bumpiest road in Season 2. Most of the active roster left the team to form a new team, Sorrow. This left Extermination in a need to recruit new talent if they were to continue competing in the scene. New recruits R3kt, Ghost, and Poke would help fill in the roles, and from there the team would be able to continue playing.
Things began to look good later on when they were picked up by Rectify Esports, thus becoming one of the very few top tier European teams to get organizational support. However, their results haven’t quite been as good, more than likely than time needed for the squad to fully mesh together. Thusly, it will only be a matter of time before this team returns to their formal glory days and reinstill fear of their sting.
In the week leading up to InkCage II, a new NA team had slowly been acquiring respectable placements in the myriad of weekly events. Then, they made a huge splash in InkCage II as they made their way into the final bracket.
Fully Torqued is interesting in that they opted to begin their debut in the deep end rather than with Young Ink. This decision may have given them the drive to compete against fellow North American teams at a surprisingly high level. Sadly, the team has now disbanded, but if the members were able to make enough of an impact, then their futures are looking very good if they choose to continue to play Splatoon.
A-Step typifies the Japanese meta influences on the rest of the scene. Pochitama, formerly of Splash!, rocked the Splat Roller back during a time when many figured the weapon to be useless until the buff to Splashdown released. Reki, a Splatling player, has more recently been pushing Custom Jet Squelcher as the premier Sting Ray weapon in Japan. Rentana constantly pushes the slosher meta to its limits. And Ribia is essentially an encyclopedia of weapons based on the large number that he can play at tournament level.
A-Step is a powerful team for sure, but their activity in Season 2 as a team has been limited to January events, where they were able to win two events and place top eight in three others. Currently this team is flexing their power in the DAIOU league, and are matching up against the best in the scene.
Silver Hawks makes a return to this list despite having only competed in five events in the last few months. But when one of those victories include a sizeable European tournament, then it is more than well deserved. In fact, through the French scene Silver Hawks has been gaining traction in lieu of the recent power vacuum in the scene.
As the team continues to build up more and more results, expect them to come out on top on the French scene once they have figured out matchups against others who have been able to compete on a worldwide stage.
