Powerup and incoming Midwest fighting game tournaments

So I just came back from the Powerup tournament in Cincinnati, OH at Arcade Legacy. The venue was really nice with wide-open spaces and stuff but it was… surprisingly empty. I did like how participants got free access to Arcade Legacy, that was awesome. I think I spent way too much time playing Magical Drop 3 with one of my buddies during that weekend.

But really, why wouldn't you?

I played in Skullgirls and KOF13, as well as MBAACC and BBCSEX for their King of Anime.

Pretty much in every single game I played I went 1-2, so it’s kinda frustrating.

Get 'em Peacock

For Skullgirls, I really didn’t spend as much time with the game as I should have. My Peacock was dropping combos left and right instead of other stuff and my Parasoul was more or less an hour 10 Parasoul (and most of those hours was the drive from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati). I really do feel like the combination of Peacock and Parasoul (although I might switch her out for Double) is a good one, but they both need a lot of work to be effective it seems. I’m definitely going to need to spend more time in training mode for this game.

Team Jailbait is the Best Team.

In KOF13, I realized over the weekend that my offense needs a lot of work. I’m do think that I’m starting to get a handle on the neutral game with my team (Athena/Kula/Yuri), but the transition from neutral to pressure for me is hard, especially since my pressure doesn’t seem very scary. Also hitconfirms, they’re hard. I’m definitely missing a lot of good opportunities to do good damage, especially with Yuri. I think I’m going to need to sit down and think carefully about how I should open people up per character. Yuri in particular seems to have a lot of good tools like her many crossups and instant command grab but Kula seems to be fairly fundamental in comparison. In her case, I’m probably going to need to think of some good frame traps or some other way to take advantage of other people being annoyed by Kula’s amazing 2B and 5B.

Miyako getting in there

Melty Blood was definitely my favorite tournament, but I’m biased. They ran it round robin due to the (small) amount of players. Melty in general is kinda… poverty though. PC setups are annoying, especially if you wanna use your own stick. For one match, I borrowed another guy’s stick, but he set the buttons in a non-standard way so I couldn’t use E. I think I missed an airthrow ender and a reversal Heat before I figured it out. My Melty play needs work too, I’m way too predictable with my air approaches and attacks and I have too much trouble punishing predictable air stuff with shield. I did play Brandino’s F-Ciel, and that was fun. Learned a lot about that matchup and a bit about Melty in general.

If I ever win on stream, I'm gonna do this.

For the Blazblue, this is actually the first time I’ve used Platinum instead of Rachel in a tournament. After Winter Brawl, I decided to switch to Platinum mostly because I was having a really hard time with Rachel’s neutral game. I like playing Plat, but I need a lot of work with her, mostly with her neutral and pressure. I know her A pressure is really good, but I have a hard time implementing it effectively. During a lot of my matches, I did tick As into throws a lot, but I feel that there should be a lot of good traps that I should be able to implement while barraging the opponent with As. The other problem is that I have trouble starting up A pressure and I think that goes back to the neutral game. It’s hard for me to start pressure (in general) but especially with Plat and especially against characters with good pokes (dammit Ragna). On a side note, the Platinum announcer pack is well worth the money.

On another side note, as part of Team 2A, we offered our streaming services for anime games. They said somebody was gonna take care of it. But when we got there and played, there was a grand total of nobody. Opportunity missed guys.

Well, there’s always the chance to improve and do better the next tournament. Looks like that chance will be pretty soon though.

I’m probably going to Parma, OH with other Pittsburgh players to play in their Console Combat monthlies. It’s a pretty short drive and only one day, so that should be fun.

We’re also going to be going to Season’s Beatings: Summer Slam in Columbus  in early May. That one should be quite fun since it’s a Evo-season tournament. I’ll probably work my anime games a bit more before this tournament especially. I know Columbus loves their KOF too, so I’m looking forward to playing more with them come time.