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Return of the Apes

Written by kingmonkey

Legion of Killer Apes are the lowest ranking team in the cup again, and Bink once more braves the simian death-dealings at Monkeytopia to quiz Kingmonkey about future plans, present thoughts, and fine ales.

Last time we spoke was in September 2014 (18232) before your R7 game against Stinging Scorpions in s56 (we are now s60). You told us that "what I want most out of the cup is player experience (and a bit of cash). My focus these days is on training, not winning." Has anything changed on this front, and if not, how soon will it be before you switch from 'training mode' to higher stamina with staff focused more on improving match performance than training assistance?

I'm still enjoying the training, and I intend to see my current batch optimised through their careers. That's quite a few seasons more concentrating on training. After that, who knows? I might try being competitive again, but I might just get a new batch of trainees.

Your pick of 2014 tunes was Weird Al's "Foil", one of a number of great comic reworks of popular tracks. What's been your favorite 2015 tune (excluding Adele's comical cover version of the Lionel Richie classic)?

I'm going to say Allons-Y 1, from Pink Floyd's Endless River (https://youtu.be/Vx3apuouFvg) . Mostly because I love Pink Floyd. To be honest it was a fairly bland album, but it's still Pink Floyd, and those guys can PLAY.

There's been some revisions to staff and a revised match engine since we last spoke. The revisions to normal forwards to include playmaking and to IMs to include scoring, must have been music to your ears as a DF trainer (which is clearly being reflected in your current cup run). Other than that what changes have been made that you really like, really don't like and what changes to the ME do you think are still long overdue?

This last batch of changes surprised me, because I have basically no faith in the game developers. It took them a long time, but what they ended up with wasn't all that bad once they'd worked out the dumb bits. Honestly though, the match engine, and many of the assumptions of the game, need a total rewrite, and has needed it for about a decade. The game just doesn't scale in the way it's had to, and that's the root of pretty much all of Hattrick's problems.
As for worse change? That's obvious. The insane price rise.

You mentioned to us previously, that you enjoy interesting ales and fine single malts. What are your current favorites of each of these?

My favourite single malt is generally the one I have by the side of my desk, which currently means a 16 year old Lagavulin (http://www.venicewhiskey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Laguvulin-16-vs.-Laphroig-10-Year-Cask-Strength3.jpg). As for ales, it's all Adnams at the moment. I'll drink a Broadside or Ghost Ship (https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5532/13541266495_6145308672_b.jpg) any day, but I tried an Adnam's Old Ale the other day, a 19th century recipe for a dark mild. Not amazing, but tasty enough and certainly interesting.

fetts has done the job expected of the U20 manager and taken us through to R2, which kicks off on the day the new Star Wars film is released. The NTs had a good run into the latter stages with AGDHD, and this season we elected defunked with 76% of the vote, to try and get us out of a very tricky looking Group 8. What do you think about this?

Fetts did the business in round one, and I fancy us to progress to the next round. Defunked has a hard task ahead of him, and little luck to help him out so far. I think he's going to need to work on the tactical options to get out of this one. We're a bit too one-dimensional and easy to predict at the moment, and I'd like to see more attacking options and more SP, but he's limited in the players available.

Please provide a link to your favourite work of art?

I'm an arts guy, so this is an impossible question. I'll go with the third "hell" panel from Hieronymus Bosch's tryptich The Garden of Earthly Delights (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Hieronymus_Bosch_-_The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_-_Hell.jpg). A five hundred year old masterpiece of insane inventiveness, and beautifully painted. I can happily stare at it for hours. Literally.

You mentioned a few of your promising trainees (Greaves/Pottinger/Leadbetter/Johnsen) last time, and it is good to see that you are still nurturing all 4 (now aged @22/25/28/29) What skill-sets are they currently boasting, and what's your long term plan for them?

They're tasty players, and I've got two more who are not quite NT level players but still strong. LoKA is possibly stronger in terms of English central attack than the England squad at the moment. Pottinger is roughly triple titanic. Leadbetter is similar, with a slightly more attack oriented balance. Mo is around 4.5 levels behind, then, and Johnson about the same behind him. All have Magnificent or better SP. They'll go on being trained. Not sure if Leadbetter will make it to the NT, but he offers something different in an attack strong option. Pottinger should make it next time if not this, he's a rare QDF with great skills. Greaves and Johnson I expect to both make the NTs.

Many years ago you unearthed a set of numbers that reflected the relative contributions provided by individual players by orientation within the previous version of the match engine. Please tell us if this was like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and how it contrasts with the modern approach of the GMs publishing the numbers from a link to a spreadsheet in a My-ht announcement?

I did? I don't remember that, but it doesn't surprise me. I like to dig into the numbers occasionally, and sometimes I've found apparent relationships which have guided my play. However there are dedicated folks out there who spend many hours doing sophisticated research and analyses that are probably a whole lot more accurate than my dabblings. I'm all for the HTs publishing the data for all to see rather than leaving it for those with the time to do the research, it's more democratic. There will always be little things here and there for people to discover for themselves, if only because they ask different questions. Just lately I've begun to wonder if player age is more of a factor than we've been allowing for and I might get around to doing a bit of digging into that some time soon. HTs have been warning us for years that the match engine has some quirks that haven't been taken into account in our standard models.

Last time out you recommended "Guardians of the Galaxy", please could you tell us your pick of the movies that you've seen since?

The Martian (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/). Go and see it if you haven't. Two and a half hours just flew past. Very intelligent script, great acting, full of tension and some surprising humour.