Manager Spotlight: Les Miserables

The Spotlight this month shines on the most sluggin' manager Scandinavia has ever seen. He won more titles on KO in a few weeks than most of us will win in a lifetime. He is the one and only titlehoging, ip-dealing, slugger managing, winning machine. He is Les Miserables.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

It's so damn boring to talk about how ones everyday life looks like so i settle with telling you that i'm a pretty ordinary single (extremely good looking!) white male in his best years, spending most of the day in front of a computer. Did i mention i look way way better than Anfield and Punch?

How did You get into playing WeBL and when did You start?

I had my first fights WeBL week 45. I found it when i was searching for good boxing sites and more or less stumbled over a link to it. It turned out to be the only site i visited that day…

Do You have any "real-life" friends playing?

At least not anyone i know of. :-). But after login in almost every day for over a year it kind of feels like many of the Scands is real life friends, eventhough i never meet anyone of them.

Why do You love it?

Apart from that it's a computergame it's definately the strategy thing that keeps me going. The fact that you compete against real people trying their best to beat you also is very important of course. Also you can play it without stress as you've got 5 days to prepare for every fight still without makeing the game too slow. All you have to do is to adjust the gymsize to suite the amount of time you have. In between the fights you can visit the forums and all that stuff, i'm sure Anfield can tell you more about all that though.

How many active fighters do You have right now?

About 45, almost half of them are contenders and the other half is high ranked regionals. At the moment i've only got 1 active fighter below status 9. Some of the contenders is on the virge of retirement as they've become total crap from random ap's and real bad luck with intensive training. I'm gonna give them a little more time but there ain't much hope for low agility sluggers with 18-19 con so they will probably be replaced with some new prospects in a few weeks. The gymsize will probably stay somewhere between 45-55 fighters for a while. Yep, i like to read fightcards. ;-)

Your gym name, Les Miserables, it's quite sad. Does it mean anything special?

Not really, i just thought it suited the first bunch of fighters a had since i knew they would suck and they pretty much was doomed to take some serious beatings. I guess i felt sorry for them in a way. It doesn't have anything to do with the play, infact i haven't even seen it. I think the name was in my mind just because it was played or recently had been played in a theater close to where i live and you have to name your gym something before you can start to play.

Is this Your first and only gym or have there been others?

First and only gym. Except for short tourneys in private regions of course.

Tell us the story about all Your title-winning-slugger-machines.

From the begining i tried to have as much fun as possible and tried to win titles with fighters i knew more or less sucked (not all of them of course) pretty bad. I really liked the challenge of being forced to scout as good as possible and come up with a specially designed fp for every specific fight, or i would've been smoked if i didn't. After a while it all began to feel more and more like a job, the fun and the challenge was completely gone. I tried to downsize and keep the same kind of fighters but it didn't help at all. However some of them actually was pretty good and helped me to see what really happens in the fights, apart from trying to impress the judges. I got more and more pissed about how important design was and how little the amount of work i put in payed off or even mattered. The fight engine was a little bit diffrent back then and heavily favoured strong fighters (btw, it still does just not as much as it used to). I had just had my first wt-fight with Tally Hoo (tall, fast and agile with low strength) and lost it due to damage in scoring against an efficiency fighter. There had been a lot of discussions going on in the design forum about upcoming changes to the engine. The new engine was installed and i decided to take a wt fight against the same opponent as last time only because Tally Hoo had been ranked as number 2 4-5 times earlier without getting the wt-fight scheduled (he was ranked 3:rd when he got his first shot) and i wanted to see if he had a chance under the new rules. This time i was 3 aps down and wouldn't stand a chance as it was a rematch and my opponent knew what he was doing and had the last fightcard to help his scouting. 24 hours before the fight Bruce decided to pull back the changes and left Tally Hoo in an unwinnable fight. Eventhough the fight did go on for some rounds it was over in the second round when he wen't inside with high enough def to not take any chances and still cause enough damage to kill off all of Tally Hoo's possibilities to win any rounds at all without opening up too much and get himself killed. I can't really say i was very happy with Bruce at that moment and i'm glad i didn't post anything in the forums when i found out that he had decided to use the old engine for the fight. I even kept quiet after the fight (not logging in also helped a lot of course). Still very pissed about it i followed all the whining from slugger managers about sluggers being dead and all that total crap. And when the current sim was released i was so fed up with the whiners that i decided to only manage those "dead" sluggers. By wearing down about 70-80% of my opponents to obviously tired (including all the fights where i got dq:ed) and at one point hold 10 regional titles at the same time (and i only had fighters in 13 weight classes) in the strongest region i think i pretty much proved them wrong about sluggers being dead. Before i created my sluggers i wrote a post in the design forum about how the engine works and how fed up i was about that some fighters didn't stand a chance at all. So they are more like protest fighters to prove i was right rather than anything else. With the new fp's i wrote i knew that they would be a pain in the ass for the region they fought in and that they would win me loads of regional titles. Many of the best managers had earned their respect and titles entirely by having strong fighters with very easy matchups under the old sim. I tried to create the same kind of fighters and do the same thing but do it under a much harder engine for that kind of fighters. I'm not trying to sound cocky or anything but i belive that my fighters and fightplans would beat the crap out of most of the managers that was considdered good with the old engine. One of my points in my post in the design forum was about the longterm importance of ips so one of my goals with my sluggers was to deal at least 100 ips per fight, i don't know how they've been doing ip-wise but i belive they're not that far off the goal. I didn't really wanted to do this in Scandinavia but i have a real hard time with region jumpers so i had no other option than to stay where i was, sorry about that guys. :) Actually i never really liked that kind of fighter as they limit the gameplay and leaves no real room for surprises and mind wars between the managers. But as long as the engine works the way it does and people want's automatic wins for their sluggers against taller weak fighters or even because they have 1 more point of strength than their opponent, i'll keep my fighters strong and play the efficiency game. It's not that i didn't like the game when i created them, it was more about being frustrated over how it worked and how stupid and selfish i thought the arguments for keeping it the same way was. Half of the people defending the old sim didn't have a clue what they were talking about but still they're the ones having it their way all the time simply by whining enough.

Will the Les Mis "Slugger Saga" ever end?

NO!!! You wish. ;)
Nah seriously, the next set of fighters will be a little more balanced but still with emphas on strength, that will make their fights a little less dependent on their opponents stats and hopefully allow them to have a little longer careers (also there's another reason having to do with how aps and use of styles differs at diffrent statuses, but thats another story and i haven't really tested it yet). Not that my current fighters usually takes any ips but as i only use premade offensiv minded fightplans some of them have ended up in real wars and took their fair share, the rest will inevitably get there too. It ain't always very smart too try to beat another slugger when the style bonus doesn't give you the defense you intended to have when you created the fighter in the first place. In those fights it's very hard too keep the damage down even if you're winning the endurance battle. To be a little more specific in the answer i can say that once you've started to use the engine it's hard to go back to the trying to have fun part again so i guess the sluggers i started this summer was the begining of a new way to play the game for me.

Have You allways managed sluggers or have You had other types of fighters?

In the begining i didn't really create any fighters to win titles, i tried to make them challenging and fun to manage, my thought was that it would help me understand the game better. It's only the last couple of months i've had sluggers, before that it was mostly weaker fighters with way too much speed. None really with enough strength to control the fights. I guess i for diffrent reasons always more or less on purpose have had fighters that wasn't considdered to be the optimal, but still i've tried to have competitive ones of course.

What's the secret behind sluggers?

There is no big secrets, it's all about being efficient enough to get the endurance advantage. Once you've secured the endurance battle you've left yourself with a nifty ap advantage that keeps increasing throughout the fight and leaves you with several ways too win. You can either try to outscore your opponent as a taller fighter not necisarily is mathematically taller than your fighter anymore or you can stay efficient and go for knockdowns and big scoring rounds later. Another often overlooked possibility is cuts as the chances for opening up cuts heavily depends on basedamage and not so much on randomnes and cut resistance as it first appears to do. Even if you don't aggravate the cuts enough for the doctor to step in and stop the fight the extra fatigue can be crucial if you're gonna be able to score stuns and knockdowns later. IMO a sluggers fp should always look for cuts not neciserily because of the possibility to chase and aggravate them to stop the fight, but because in some cases a cut may allow you to increase your tradeoff in the endurance battle. If you're trying to win the endurance battle it is very very important to inflict as much damage as early as possible while taking as little as possible. Therefor you should look for every little opportunity too speed up the process. To make it simple, if used properly strength makes the fight-engine work for you and controlls the fight more than the score does (except for round 12 of course). With cuts it ain't really the cut you should chase, it's the base damage and the negative effects your opponent has to deal with that is your goal. It's almost only when you've already maxed them out you really should go for the actual cut. If you look at my fights you'll see that almost every opponent has obtained several cuts and that an unusuall amount of the fights gets stopped by the doctor because of eye injuries, that ain't no coincidence it's a part of the strategy.

Are You a number-cruncher or do You play by feel?

When i scouted i looked more for ways to mess up or use my opponents assumed fightplan to my advantage rather than tracking his exact stats. After scouting for a while you learn by your mistakes and can get a decent picture of your opponent without having to track his exact stats. To try to create and maintain the "perfect" fighter is impossible because of random aps and of course mainly because of the fact that the engine uses both fighters stats and tactics when it sims the fights. I don't know, maybe it's worth putting some time into trying to track the stats but i'm not sure, i think it's more important to learn how to write fp's.

Have You read all the rules?

The first thing i did was to take a glance at the rules, then i created my first fighters while i printed out the rules and went to bed and started reading them. After that i've checked them out a couple of times to fresh up or if there was something i wondered. I mean why shouldn't i read and learn the rules? After all it's whats in the rules that makes the fights end up the way they do…

Do You know the rules by heart?

I know how the engine works, the essentials of the rest ain't very complicated or even that important. I wouldn't say i'm an expert but i know them good enough.

Do You pay attention to every fight or are some fighters automated?

I don't really scout, not even for my top ranked contenders so the prefight preparations is the same for every fight. And then i read every fightcard with the same intrest regardless if it's a status 3 fight or even a wt quallifier. So wether your able to beat me at status 5 or if you do it at 15 doesn't have anything to do with my intrest in the fight. I guess it's more the man o man war i like rather than the career mode.

How much time do You usally spend on a fight?

The two things i look at is my opponents ko ratio and from what gym he is. I rarely do more than that but some times i check his height and what style he used in the first round in his latest fight. Most of the prefight preparation is deciding what to train and check if intensive training is necessary or not. Usually i have made all the preparations in about 10-15 seconds. If something seems odd at the first glance it happens that i spend up to a minute. But in addition to my limited set of fighters i have very complex fightplans that takes care of most of the scouting, all i really have to do is to choose which style seems to bee the most apropriate. It took me some time to write them but they save me a lot of time now. This has of course also lead to that i can loose to the same opponent several times as for example against Erkka "Macho" Turaka but in that case the outcome of the fights depended very much on his approach and strategy, Mixus found a way to win the fights and was willing to take the necessary ips to get the win, i think he deserved all those wins for showing guts and never duck the fights eventhough he knew how expensive they would be for his fighter. But honestly my fightplans could be a lot better and i hope i can find some time to improve them. Next step is to get rid of the damn lines that sometimes makes me chase cuts in the 12:th round. ;)

How many fightplans do You write per week?

I haven't written a fp since June.

Wich fights do You remember the most?

One of the most recent fights i remember is Nanny Drolone-Razin Cain, i was down some aps and the winner had a good chance to get a wt fight. Cain choosed a very bad strategy and Nanny won the endurance battle bigtime and didn't need to rest after the 5:th round while Cain was obviously tired and had some nasty cuts. Then as a last desperate shoot he pulls off a kp-packed 7:th round when Nanny went 6C/10/4 (ropes) and got the ko he wanted. That really sucked as i knew very well what type of fighter he was since i faced him twice with Rene Barbier. Got to give it to him though that even if he had fought a real bad fight his solution for the situation was a real masterpiece, so in that way he deserved to win, but still, argh!!! Another recent fight i remember is when i was to face a flasher and put in a very simple fp that basically is about surviving the first 2-3 rounds and it turned out that my opponent had changed fp and used Simplest tactics instead of the usuall flasher one. I didn't see that one coming and lost big on points in a completely ridiculous fight... My memory is filled with useless crap so i got a pretty clear memory of most of the fights i had before i started with my sluggers. Since i started the sluggers i'd say i remember about 40% of their fights pretty well. Usually there ain't no real reason for which fights i remember and which i don't.

What keeps You motivated?

Actually i haven't felt any real motivation since my first fight in the last olympics. But the best parts is no doubt reading the fightcards, plus that we have a great comunity in Scandinavia so it's very hard to leave even if your not always that motivated.

Any advice for newbies?

Design is very important, if you like speed give your fighter the amount you think is good and then subtract 4 and put those points in strength and agility instead. Same thing goes for all other stats (including strength), put them where they're needed and not where you wished them to be. You ain't gonna learn the game by creating freaks and they will get killed sooner or later anyway. Only use more than 4-5 agg if you really have too. And no, 60% of the times you didn't need too eventhough you thought you did. If you end up obviously tired you've either been in a real war or most likely did something very wrong in the first 2-3 rounds, find out what happend and make sure to rest when needed next time. If your fighter got koed in the 10:th round that wasn't the round who made you loose the fight, it was the earlier rounds that made the ko possible.Short version, endurance damage and fatigue is more important than showing off infront of the refs, it's your opponent you should beat and not the refs. Take some time and learn how to write advanced fightplans instead of using the premades, they don't have to be that advanced to beat the shit out of the premades anyway. The practise sim ain't there for fun it's there for testing and practise, use it. One thing myself and basically everyone else really could do to improve is to adjust better during the fight as the aps changes with every round, there is nothing that says that the best style to use in the 7:th round is the same as it was in round 1. For example a sluggers best style mid/late in a fight could very well be ropes or counter. Think it sounds strange? Check out how the damage and punches landed formulas works. I don't think even Prod comes close to using the engine and the formulas the way they could be used. Myself? Way way way off!

If you ever were to quit this game, how do You wish to be remembered and how do think people actually will remember You?

Haven't really thought about it, but in the ring it would be nice to be remembered as someone you wish you had ducked even if you won the fight. Outside of the ring i'd of course like to be remembered as a nice guy you respected. As in real life i'll probably be remembered as a person that explaines the obvious things with way too many words even when no one asked any questions about it in the first place…

Any managers You respect more than others?

I have great respect for all Scands i know via mail or the forums, nice guys every single one of them. I would say Anfield is the one i considder as my best friend in WeBL since we've both been around for a while and had some contact via mail almost from the begining also we've been pretty much at the same skill level for most of the time, if one has been doing better the other one has catched up within a month or two. Perhaps Umeå West Side and Flat Out is the Scands who has the best understanding of how the game works so they are obviously worth listening too. Pity Part is another one you have to respect. Of the non Scands i have to say Peek, though i really don't know him but you have to respect a guy that is one of the absolute best at playing and is the first (and often the only) one to help Bruce improve the game with his knowledge without his own fighters best in mind. He says what he thinks is best for the game and takes it as a challenge and then adjust his fighters after the changes is a fact.

How about up'n'commers?

It's been a great year for Scandinavia with first Futagoyama who unfortunately didn't stay very long though. And then in particular all you Aggerud guys and Vinterviken. All 4 of you have really made your mark and keeps on improving all the time. It's up to you to keep the interest and take the last steps before you can seriously compete on a world level. Another manager i think may have a chance to pull something off is Rebellion, he's been experimenting a little to much, it would be nice to see him with a little more patient approach when writing fp's. Same thing for Hasan, though he's been around longer than me. I think he could do great with more longterm goals and less of trying to have exciting fights. 2 other vets who clearly knows what they're doing but whom i'd like to see with a little diffrent approach to the game is CPB who have real good fighters and fightplans but unfortunately doesn't pay attention to every fight/-er like he should. And PYM who's actually changed quite a bit during the year, but i'd like to see how he's doing with a diffrent set of fighters. It would be very intresting to see what they could do as i think they are a lot better than they often seem to get credit for. But i have to say that the level of competition just gets better and better, that of course will make it easier and easier for intrested newbies to learn the game so i would be very surprised if we didn't see at least 3-4 really really good new managers during 2002.

Is there anything You would like to change about the game?

A lot of things! First of all it's plain ridiculous that you don't get any ip's the round you loose on ko, but the winner still gets his ip's. If i had 2 fighters up in the rankings in contenders i could destroy the champ with a body allout, take the 25 ips and loose on purpose only to give my other fighter an easy fight the week after, or simply do it because i don't like the manager i'm facing. The second thing is that kp is way to strong and Bruce still seems to think it could use an improvement. It's just that not many people have used it the way it could be used but it seems like it's getting more and more popular. Sadly that will most likely lead to more people wanting to strengthen it even further. Personally i would prefer to limit kp at 4-5 or something like that instead of 1/3 of strength. Agility combined with Ring is too strong at high status and strength still gives your fighter a massive ap advantage against most opponents on status 0-6. The trouble with agility and strength is very hard to fix and we'll probably never see the perfect engine (even if the current is pretty good). Perhaps some modifications in the weight calculation formula could make a diffrence? I don't know. About heavyweight, lets just say i don't have any and unless it's changed completely there ain't no way i'm gonna create any either. Another thing that i don't like is how people act in contenders when they swap divisions and "steal" wt-fights from others. I really would like to see a 1 week cap for changing divisions for top 5 ranked contenders. They got enough str/agl to avoid big changes in weight that suddenly forces them to change weightclass or suffer that much from fighting over/under weight. As it is at the moment it doesn't mean a thing to be ranked 2:nd in contenders as you can rest assured that some other managers are looking for every opportunity to get the fight, preferably just before the scheduler runs so no one else makes any last minute changes. Another possibility would be to schedule wt fights imidiately after the last one took place. Changing weightclass in regionals is a diffrent story though.

What do You think of the Olympics?

See next question.

Any predictions?

It's a great tournament! A lot depends on the first round, every single team member has potential to reach the finals and maybe even win, but it's way to easy to get unlucky in such a short tournament with no scouting and single elimination. What was good the last time was our team spirit, not many people thought much of us but we knew that we had the strongest region and really really wanted to prove it. We did and won the whole thing. But if you look at the losses we had we should've won most of those fights too. Myself i lost the final, looking from outside it was a good fight but i had the fightcard and i honestly fought a crappy fight that almost totally took away the happiness of getting there in the first place. Hopefully the other ones in the team has similar experiences and feel like they don't want to be dissappointed again. A little funny, we won as everyones underdogs but at the same time we could've done a lot better than we did. Then again i guess we're not the only ones feeling that way. There will probably be a lot of surprises especially in the first round but as the fighters doesn't have that many aps and there is a big diffrence between fighting more or less blindfolded at status 5 compared to when gyms from diffrent regions usually faces eachother in contenders there will be upsets from the begining til the end.. Heavyweight scores as many points as the other weightclasses but with no scouting, virtually no aps and a recent flash the flasher competition it really would've been better to use light heavy instead. I don't care that much about what teams the other regions have so i don't really know much about them but Pacific looks strong of course and Europe finished runner ups last time and has a lot of good managers so they will probably do very well again. Also there's some good managers in the UK, don't know wether it's North or South or if they're spread all over though. If i remember correctly they didn't do very well last time so probably they don't have enough depth to win but maybe they can pull off a surprise. First round, desire and teamspirit will be the key to success for us but if everyone takes it as serious as last time, do their job and doesn't get too unlucky we should win again.

What are Your plans for the holidays?

Nothing special, relax and spend some time with my family.

What do You want for christmas?

Britney Spears would be nice.

Final words.

Hey you! Get back here i'm not finished yet!