The second season of the player-run SpyParty Competitive League (SCL) is well under way, and krazycaley has written an update for all the divisions. Please ignore the part about me losing all my matches this season, I’m sure there’s been some kind of mistake…

Thanks to magician1099 for the intro trailer!

Oh, and If I was better at blogging, you’d already know there are now two live casts for the SCL this season, the regular one Sundays at 5:30pm US Pacific time, and then the new one in a more European friendly timeslot, Saturdays at 10:30am US Pacific.  Both at the official twitch channel http://twitch.tv/spyparty of course!  You can follow the twitch channel, or follow the SpyParty Streams Notifier on http://twitter.com/spypartystreams if you prefer your notifications in the twitter flavor.

Take it away krazycaley…

Season 2 of the SpyParty competitive league has just completed its sixth week of regular season play and the playoff races are starting to heat up. Let’s take a look at the standings.

In the new Challenger Division, the strong early performers have been moth and trevor, both of whom have yet to suffer a defeat. trevor has fewer games since he’s been paired up with a couple of the folks who have dropped out, but he’s performed strikingly well in the games he’s played thus far. papers is also looking like a safe bet for inclusion in the end-of-season Challenger division tournament, which includes the top 6 regular season finishers. With three members of the division apparently dropping out, that leaves three more slots in the tournament for four more people. Of these, evilsnake and gmantsang got off to fairly hot starts to the season, but have been slowed down by defeats in recent weeks and will be looking to bounce back. malexmcblat is currently the odd man out of the tournament at this point, but is still very much in the race due to a pair of very scrappy draws. Leading this pack of four is steph, who reverses the story of evilsnake and gmantsang – she started slow, but has been performing strongly in recent weeks, and has a couple of winnable matches against malexmcblat and gmantsang coming up which could propel her into contention for a first-round bye, which requires a 1st or 2nd-place regular season finish.

Iron Division has been completely dominated by its two leaders. One of these, unsurprisingly, is moriarty, a longtime veteran entering SCL this season and very likely under-placed in Iron. But he is the runner-up as things stand, the surprising story from Iron has been new player havrd, who has 4 wins and a draw, including a win and a draw over moriarty. havrd and moriarty look like a safe bet to be in position for potential promotions at the end of the season. In Iron Division, anyone finishing in 4th or below is in danger of demotion to Challenger, so the remaining players have plenty to fight over even if havrd and moriarty run away with the lead. nanthelas and progamingeithed are in a tight fight for 3rd place, while igounseen has endured a tough winless season so far and is staring down a demotion to Challenger.

It’s a pretty tightly-packed race in Copper Division, where division leader pwndnoob suffered a recent defeat at the hands of at-the-time-5th-place aforgottentune to level the division out. pwndnoob and yeesh are the prime contenders for the divisional championship, but falconhit, catnip, and aforgottentune still all remain in striking distance. falconhit looks to be the most likely of these to challenge the leaders given past results, although aforgottentune has proven to be the bane of division leader pwndnoob, and catnip has put up strong, close results even in her defeats, and is a threat to any opponent in this division.

Bronze Division has seen veteran elite player wodar finally play up to his skill level rather than down to his competition; he is cruising through week 6 with 5 wins and one postponed game. The race for second place is between the strong-performing teetery and potential comeback player of the year rjwut, who are neck and neck for the spot. laplace, perhaps suffering against more experienced competition after being double promoted at the end of last season, looks to be locked into a potential demotion match even if the currently-absent butterscotch does not return.

Silver Division is currently all about the battle for 1st place between elvisnake and fearfulferret. Both are undefeated, and in their lone match so far they drew, but fearfulferret has the division lead on the strength of having more wins against the rest of the field than elvisnake, who’s earned more draws. There are four points between elvisnake and the next contender, iceman. iceman, lthummus, and sgnurf are in the fight to avoid finishing in 5th; iceman has the best score of these, but lthummus has the inside track since his low point count is mostly due to his many postponed matches. SpyParty developer checker looks to be a lock to finish in last as his priorities likely lie with improving the game rather than mastering it right now.

Gold Division has seen the powerful ascension of pires, who has played an astonishing 5600 games since joining the game in December of 2015, an amazing clip of over 1,000 games per month. He and longtime veteran warningtrack went neck and neck with a winning streak to open the season, but when they met in week 3, pires earned a decisive 5-2 victory. pires has let the rest of the field linger by conceding a large number of draws recently, including a week 6 draw against warningtrack, but the division is still his to lose. cameraman, scallions, and warningtrack are all crowded close behind in a tough fight for the 2nd place spot, while james1221 and briguy look likely to finish in 5th and 6th.

Though cleetose looked to be the early favorite in Platinum Division, it is slappydavis who has made a remarkable return to form over the long haul here, and he holds a three point lead over kikar and cleetose, who have also had very strong seasons thus far. sharper, the division’s last-place finisher last year, has enjoyed a resurgence of his own, as he’s in a comfortable 4th place at the moment, only a win away from challenging for the 2nd place spot. varanas is in the more tenuous 5th place spot, though he is only a point behind sharper. royalflush, doubly promoted last season, looks to be suffering the same fate as laplace, as he is struggling against this class of opponents.

The League championship contenders of Diamond Division have a much closer race on their hands than last season, which was dominated by krazycaley and scientist. While krazycaley remains the leader, his lead is a narrow one after a recent defeat at the hands of kcmmmmm. bloom, magician1099, and canadianbacon all trail krazycaley by two points (though magician1099 has one fewer match than the others), while kcmmmmm sits in 5th place, but only three points behind krazycaley himself. It’s been a disappointing season for scientist, who is winless in 6th place, but has plenty of postponed matches to play that could get him back in the picture.