729 Battle II Rubber Review

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   So this is my favorite rubber. I don't hide that I'm "not impartial". It's getting the 10s. So bear with me. I'll try to describe the experience as well.
I compare it directly to the Evolution MS-X, EL-P, Hurricane 3 and Hurricane 3 Neo.
The numbers in the review don't reflect exactly how good the rubber 
does something, but how easy it is to do it with the rubber. 

Technicalities:

Price:
$18, free shipping (ali-express).

Weight: 47g cut. Surprisingly light given its other properties. Note that my blade head is larger than usual, so for you it may well be like.. a gram or two less. Not sure. MUCH lighter than the MS-X, about the same weight as the H3/neo. Given that the Hurricane 8 is said to be very heavy, this is an advantage for the Battle II in comparison to what is probably its direct competition.

Hardness: comes in two flavors, 45 or 47 hardness. HARD. Similar to the H3. Barely yields to finger pressure, if at all. No visible pores.
The MS-X is hard sponged but a bit less than this. The EL-P of course is much, much softer. 

Tackiness:
Much tackier than any H3/Neo I ever used. They can't handle plastic balls at all while this rubber can. The thing though is that other than being very tacky, it's also straight up grippier than the H3/Neos. It feels like a very old school kind of topsheet that's nevertheless very well adapted to the plastic ball.

Consistency/Longevity: I got several sheets of this. Haven't seen one degrade seriously yet and it's been a few months. These tacky hard rubbers can last a LONG LONG time.

Regarding consistency, of course some sheets are slightly tackier than others, but none is less than spectacular. I haven't noticed any real inconsistencies in terms of play, none have bubbled up, none have separated, and none ever flaked away at the edges at all (something the Evolution rubbers are notorious for doing).
In comparison to the DHS rubbers, this is perfect consistency. With H3 Neos, some came nearly untacky, some had the red paint peel off with the upper layer of the topsheet when the packaged covering was removed, etc.

As a side-note, it'll lose tackiness during the practice so you have to clean it with a few drops of water and dry well. The tackiness will return fully after you rest the rubber a bit. Not sure why it's like that but it's what I've noticed. Perhaps it's because of the humidity at my club (when practicing on my table which is in the back yard there's no such problem. Clean it and it's back to full tackiness instantly)

Play Characteristics:

Serve: 10/10
Serves can be very spinny with just a small flick of the wrist. Couldn't get this much out of any other rubber ever. This is very important because you can get a ton of spin with a small movement, which means deception in serve is very easy, and after a certain measure of spin, deception is much more important.. Of course, with faster fuller motion it also serves spinnier than the MX-S and H3 because it can grab the plastic ball better and is non tensor so it's a lot easier to put a lot of oomph into the ball while keeping it short.

Serve Receive: 10/10 
Nothing unpredictable here. A hard sponge ultra tacky rubber will always be the best for serve receive in my opinion. No catapult like the ESN rubbers so you can easily place it where you want.
Makes it very easy to return it with lots of backspin to wherever you want because you engage mostly the tackiness of the topsheet and none of the sponge (which is too hard for that).

Something I like to do with this rubber:
Opponent serves short sidespin. I use the tackiness to just brush the ball lightly in the direction of the spin and return the ball straight with much sidespin it shoots off the opponents racket. Can't get this effect with the non-tacky rubbers I had. The MX-S can't grip the ball half as well without forward momentum and the EL-P engages the very soft sponge slightly making it return too fast with too little spin. It's very effective as a surprise serve return because other rubbers can't do it half as well, and so people just don't do it at my club.

Perfect.

Topspin 9.5
Tested to see by having a blade with Battle II on one side and the H3Neo on the other.
It was so spinny in comparison that with identical shot, balls land in the middle of the table instead near the edge with the H3. With a harder shot you'll get the balls to the end of the table and the behavior is very similar to H3, meaning that the ball flies almost straight over the net and then plunges nearly straight down by the opponents table edge.

Very hard shots were less spinny than the MS-X, but this rubber is better for spinning closer to the table and over the table.  And in non-top-power shots it was spinnier than the MS-X. I'd say the two are comparable but have different strengths.
Battle II is definitely best suited to a player that stays closer to the table and has body speed.

Block: 9
In my opinion a little less controlled than the H3 because it's a faster rubber, but it's good. Hard sponge eats up the speed. It won't shoot off like in the ESNs, so it will generally be a slower block but this is good, because it lets you control the speed and placement more easily. It's still not a slow rubber by any means, it offers a very good compromise.

I'd rate the MX-S a solid 10 in blocking, in comparison. You'll need to block more actively to get the same speed, but can choose to block softly to surprise with a more accurately placed block. You can return as fast as MS-X does when blocking passively, but it'll require an active block which is harder.  Then again, its much easier to control placement than the MS-X, so arguably it's nearly as good as the MS-X but with a different specialization.

Speed: 9
Ok, this was a surprise (I think anyone who uses this rubber will very surprised at its speed). 
I think there is some kind of catapult built into it, but it only activates when you hit quite hard and straight. I can't attribute it to the hard sponge because it's MUCH faster than the Hurricanes when you hit the ball directly with force, but is also simply faster in general. It's fast enough to use it effectively as a backhand rubber, which is very hard to do with the hurricanes. Of course, it's not ideal for that though. Sponge too hard. I still use it.

So yeah, smashes are good, direct shots are very fast but similarly to the H3s you still need a bit of a brushing motion to get the most out of it. Slightly different stroke than the ESN rubbers. In straight forward shots it's nearly as fast as the MX-S/EL-P, considerably faster than the H3s. I rate it 9 when it may deserve.. like. 8.8(?) because of the surprise factor. It really feels like a modern rubber dressed up like an old one.

Conclusion(?)

Great rubber. Easily my favorite. It seems to do everything well and make everything easy. I couldn't find any rubber other than this that ticks ALL the boxes for me but there you go. This is why it's my favorite.
It's fast but without tensor/catapult unpredictability, it's extremely spinny with barely a touch, its the absolute best at serves and serve receive (which is my favorite part of the game really), and to top it off, you can get like 3-4 of these for the price of one butterfly rubber.

Get one and try it, it's almost free :P

Edited by Lightzy - 05/10/2018 at 6:14pm