How is best-GAF doing?
I'm dead tired. T13 was awesome... But man. I played sooo bad. Approximately 36-38 people entered. I rocked Hwoarang/Julia for the tournament.
My first match was pretty easy, a Lili/Steve player. He was relatively new, but I was playing extremely scrubby. My movement was lame, I wasn't blocking after backdashes, and dropped EVERY combo I did. In the end, I mad axed the poor guy to death since he wasn't used to breaking grabs. Won 2-0.
My second match made me really mad. It was the Angel/DevilJin player that got 8th place. He was definitely new to the game, but a tournament veteran, the worst pairing I could have come up against. He had the simplest playstyle: punish everything with 1,1,2; mixup between Hell sweeps and tsunami kicks. I destroyed him in my first match 3-0. But the second match he just stopped attacking and I tried to pressue him Hwoarang shenanigans but it was an infinite stage and really didn't get the chance to pin him the way I wanted and kept eating 1,1,2's off of whiffs. I knew I was better, but I was just so out of it that I couldn't win. Lost 1-2.
Third match in loser's bracket was against
Andytekken who was beating the crap out of me in casuals with Zafina/Kunimitsu. But for the tournament for some reason he switch to Xiaoyu and Kunimitsu. He definitely had better fundamentals but I managed to beat out his Xiaoyu mixups by using Julia's hopkicks everytime she went into BT throwing him off his game and my limited playtesting of Kunimitsu was enough for me to not fall for her tricks. But his fundamentals were enough for it to go to the last round of both games but I still won 2-0.
Fourth match was against a Montreal player that plays with
Trevor(Self-Proclaimed best in Canada). His name was Smokingdevil. He used Ling/Jack. He had super good reactions and was really wary about the best options available to him. I could definitely tell it's a result from the sessions he has with the Montreal crew. But regardless, he fell for a lot of Hwoarang things in the first match and I played relatively solid so I got the 3-0 victory. but then he wised up and caught me with a lot of good frame traps and baited me really well that lead into launchers. Lost the next 2 games 1-3 and 0-3 before getting eliminated. Didn't bug me as much, he was clearly the better player.... until he lost to the guy that put me into losers. Then I got confused. Maybe it really was just tournament nerves.
Also, button mapping things like 1+2, 3+4, 1+4, etc. to your triggers on the pad or buttons on a stick were bannned. So there's that to consider.
I got to do some commentary after for some
pool play (6:58:50) and the
majority of the top 8 (starts 2:36:20). I screwed up a bunch of times with my notation and sometimes I was scared I talked too much. Commentary isn't easy. You get tired pretty easy and you have to balance between the technical aspects and the hype part (which I SUCKED at considerably)
Ah well, I just stepped up in top 8 because Alex (the guy I was commentating with in pools) was really tired.
Overall though, I got to play a ton of casuals... Let's just say, going to majors is a real experience. There are true MONSTERS out there who REALLY break the game down in practice mode. They WILL break your throws, they WILL read your lows, and they WILL consistently land all their combo's, and they WILL take and reap every single punishable thing they are given (whiff or on block). It was pretty brutal. I don't know if they're just gifted with landing them with such consistency and natural reactions... but there were people there that I just could not touch. Specifically OFDP and Tee-vo (didn't get to play casuals with the MTL crew since I was preparing for VF5 and after VF5 I went straight to do commentary for TTT2 Top 8.
But man, it was fun... and I'm dead tired from the journey. Here's to next time!
