PowerPlay Magazín

Slovenian manager Mrk1 and his hockey team Lethal Penguins is currently lying 11th in the Slovenian II.2. Mrk1 is a very active user in forums and he has also bought more credits than anyone else in Slovenia. The editorial team of PowerPlay Magazine was lucky to get an interview.

The interview has been originally written in Finnish PowerPlay Magazine so it may contain some unfamiliar things for users of other countries.

BobaFett: How did you start powerplaymanager??
Mrk1: My cousin (Sime) was active on ppm long before. When final-beta of ice hockey was launched, he informed me and my brother (ToniB) about it, as we\'re great fans of ice hockey. The RL season of our favourite team HDD Olimpija in EBEL league has just started and we were all into it. I was not interested for ppm at first, but my brother registered. Then he has some problems about understanding concepts in the game and asked me for an opinion. The easiest way to look into it was to register. I\'ve figured out that both of them don\'t have a clue, what qualities mean, for example. The rest is a history...

B: Where your ice hockey team name Lethal Penguins comes from??
M: Penguins are funny ice related animals. To add some seriousness, as ice hockey is a serious and tough sport, I\'ve added Lethal.

B: Tell a little bit about you.
M: I'm 38 years old software engineer/project manager in a software company, which I co-own. Not married yet, but living with the same woman for 12 years now. I like to spend some of my spare time for sports, some for computer games and some for drinking beer with my friends. I\'m a great fan of all kind of sports and like to attend/watch live as many events as possible. As for gaming, I don\'t play many games. But those, which I play, I play very seriously and dedicated

B: You are in your serie II.2 in eleventh place, how has you period started??
M: We've have lost a match yesterday and we're at 15th place now. My season has started as bad as it could. I have only a handful of players, which I can be proud of and I hope that fortune will be far more generous to my team in the future. We've lost first 3 matches of the season, among them was a match against my brother's team. I was really desperate at that time, but then we've won 4 of the next 5 matches and had 2 victories over the leading teams at that moment.

B: Have you any objectives to your serie or the Slovenian cup??
M: Play-off spot is an objective in league II.2. Then it will be a match-by-match situation. We have proven that we can beat anyone in our league, but luck is a big factor at this moment, as all the teams are very strength equal I'm laying a lot of my hopes into our sports academy, which is the major consumer of our finances at the moment. I hope it will pay off with some good players until the end of the season.
As for Slovenian cup, I don't have any special objectives for this season. We'll try to do our best, but I don't intend to tire my players too much in cup matches. Of course, we have to beat bot teams (1st round). Later it will depend on tactical decisions and luck. We are seeded quite badly, because our team rating is quite low and I can expect tough opposition in cup matches.

B: What do you think of the PRE-Final version of PPM??
M: Generally, I like it. I have played final-beta since September and a lot has been done in this time. 4x time speed was a quite hard to follow and I didn't want to miss too much, so I was very active. PRE-Final's normal speed seemed to be a bit boring at first, but now I'm used to it and more of my spare time goes anywhere else.
There are some matches, that seem to be affected by random too much, especially when my goalie(s) performance is concerned. I think I know some tactics and counter-tactics approaches quite well, but surprises are still regular. I have a feeling, that some things have changed in game engine since final beta, but then again my players are sooo bad compared to players at the end of final beta.
The most annoying thing to me right now is the distribution of players generated by sports academies. It's simply to wide. For example, nobody could have level 5 on previous Thursday and mine was at level 4 also. My best player had OR 156 and another one 125. But there are players with OR 200+ with insane qualities and such a player is a way too big boost to a team at this stage of game.
The second most annoying thing are cheaters, but I have confidence that GMs are doing their job well. I have reported quite a number of suspicious transfers/accounts so far and their fate is sealed in most cases...
I still have to try training camp, which was not available before. I'll wait with it and improve sports academy as far as I could.

B: What do you want to say to the Finnish readers of PP Magazine??
M: You have a great ice hockey team and they should have win USA on Wednesday. Sweden was my favourite team in semis, but they're out also. I'm with Russia now, because they're from Europe and because Sime is such a fan of Canada.
Finnish rally drivers are crazy and Janne Ahonen should listen to more jokes. Olli Rehn should listen to Slovenia more and Patria should bribe less, but I doubt any of them will read this.
You have a strong ice hockey community on ppm and I wish you all the best, but our NT will heave bigger chances to beat you here than in real life.
Listen to BobaFett, as he's very smart for his age and don't smuggle vodka from Estonia.
Have fun and I love my Nokia.

The article has been written by BobaFett who earned 10 credits because of his job.