If anyone was curious, I've been testing out spinlord gipfelsturm in 1.8... and bam! It seems to be about the perfect rubber for my purposes. Classified as a "long pip" but quite rigid and stiff in the pimples. They're not bendable really, at all. Nothing like a curl rubber where you can thumb across the top and make the "bvvvvvvvvp" sound. These are pretty much set in place with slight movements.
It plays like a mix of medium pips and long pips. In that you can punch-block/attack backspins and pushes as you would with LP or frictionless anti (slightly diminished though). And you can also block pretty much like you would with inverted, only much less spin sensitive. Heavy spins are easy to redirect around the table. The amount of reversal is dependent upon the incoming spin. More often than not, the ball is returned relatively dead. If your opponent cranks up the spin, then your blocks will have a bit more reversal. If you base your game on reversal and rely on having 'heavy chop' returned off of blocks, then I don't think you'll like this rubber. It's more of a point and shoot variety.
No spin balls or low spin balls... they can be attacked, but not too fiercely, or you risk having the ball float long. You'd have to do more placement with moderate pace, rather than a SLAM finish as you see with short pips. I feel that you can attack the high "float" balls pretty effectively, much more so than you can with LP or anti. I wouldn't make a habit of it, but the one or two here and there should be easy putaways.
You can also attack moderate top spin balls, but again, using controlled power. What I really like about the rubber is its ability to chop the ball at really any pace and spin. Low spin balls can be chopped back with a lot of rotation. And top spin balls can also be chopped back with a bit of reversal, and a lot of your own spin. It's not nearly as easy as chopping with actual LP, in that the ball does tend to return quite high against heavy top spin, so your blade angle is important. In that aspect, they're more like SP chopping. Variety of spin over heavy chop reliance again.
For my game of block close and chop mid to long, these are about as good as you could hope for. They're not as idiot proof as slick LP's when it comes to serve return so there is some danger there, to a degree. You can pretty much bop back any back spin serve (ala long pips/anti), but if they trick you with a top spin serve, you can expect to have it fly up if you don't adjust. Whereas with the frictionless anti or slick LP, you won't be punished too heavily for that sort of thing.
