OOAK Table Tennis Forum

There are 2 threads in this section on Strahlkraft LP. I chose to post in this thread as it has more responses/activity. I'm a former USATT 2000+ rated player that stopped playing for a year or so and for the last couple of years have been playing 3 to 4 times per month. As such my current playing level isn't close to 2000. My style is LP OX chop block on BH to set up my FH loop. I mention this to give some context of my comments regarding Strahlkraft.

Before trying Strahlkraft I was playing with Talon OX red. With the plastic ball the loss of spin reversal makes BH chop blocking much less effective. With plastic, I think you need a more all round LP game that allows you to chop block, aggressively push (this is also less effective with less spin on the ball) and hit with the LPs. The Talon is good for chop blocking, not so much for hitting. This led me to try Strahlkraft OX.

My setup is Strahlkraft OX red BH, Hurricane 3 Neo FH on Butterfly Schlager Carbon blade. I have now played total of 10 hours spread across 3 weeks with this setup. This is a very good LP for an active game. Chop blocks stay low with spin reversal about the same as Talon, maybe a little less. Strahlkraft is very good at hitting no spin, backspin or even topspin balls. I can hit through incoming loops. The consistency isn't as good as it would be if I twiddled and counter with the inverted, but its reasonably consistent considering this is an OX LP. Hitting loops creates a flat skidding ball. This shot doesn't need to be very fast as my opponent will invariably loop their shot into the net if they don't adjust quickly enough to the flat skidding ball and try to reloop it like they would a normal inverted returned ball.

The LP is slow enough. I don't have a problem dropping the ball short with my chop blocks even with the Schlager Carbon blade against medium or medium fast loops. Against very fast loops, you need a very quick chop block action to return the ball on the table. I've never blocked passively (hand hold blocking) so I don't know how effective this LP will be with that technique. Side swipe works well. This is a very good OX LP for an active LP game.

One thing I forgot to mention: The base of the OX sheet is pretty thick and has a dark red color. This will allow you to cover graphics on a blade without those being visible as is the case with the translucent red OX LPs. Also it comes with a plastic sheet attached on top of the pips which makes the OX sheet stiffer so that gluing it on your blade is very easy. Once you glue on the blade, peel off this plastic sheet.

I tried this in 1.0 for two half-day sessions on a Spinlord Ultra Carbon DEF (speed is OFF-). After the first day my opinion was that stylistically it feels closer to a medium pip. Generally I never LP blocked at the table much but with this I could passive block solid loops somewhat easily - it was a little impervious and would send back low, dead, medium speed balls that were of low disruption (but not none) and a little annoying to opponents at times - I suspect more due to the speed and lower reaction time for them. In more of a blocking drill where I knew where the ball was coming I could be more active and shove through the block and that worked pretty well too, and I could vary dept short/long a little bit. Chop blocking didn't seem very good, nor chopping though I didn't that much. Overall it just isn't very spinny which can definitely be problematic. Attacking no spin and under can be nasty but sometimes it is hard to work out the feel/angle. Second session passive blocking was still okay but I was having problems with angles and controlling the ball and made a lot more errors. It feels great when someone is loading up hard loops on you but when they start shoving slow or junky stuff deep to BH it is tricky to be effective with it (due to lack of spin and sometimes control). I would be curious to try this rubber in OX some day - that Polish young guy comparison video as well as some other comments here suggest that it is very different than 1.0.