Once a month, Iowa gamers that specialize in the art of complicated combos and frame traps find themselves driving to a small tabletop gaming store named Battlezone Games. Cedar Rapids gamer Scott Jackson, handle "Xiang", runs a once-a-month series of tournaments at the Hiawatha shop, and eager gamers across the state meet up for the chance to see how they fare against their state-wide brothers and sisters. Dubuque's fighting game fanatics are no different, and so a trio of us made our usual monthly trek to the appropriately-named Battlezone in Cedar Rapids' suburb to play some games, see some old friends and, of course, throw down for a small amount of cash and a larger amount of bragging rights and pride in our one-on-one games of choice. This threesome, consisting of myself ("Hogosha"), long-time fellow gamer and rival Alex (handle "Keela"), and local old-school gamer James ("DTJB"), pulled up to the venue within 10 minutes of the tournament's beginning; after an incredibly small amount of practice matches, setup and socializing with fellow Iowans the opening rounds began.
My first match in MVC3 was against Central Iowa player "Latino Link", playing against his team of (I believe) Dante, Trish, and Zero. Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure of Zero, but what I am sure of is the importance of practice before a match. And I only had one short match with fellow Dubuque player Jackie ("Kintehr"). The rust showed as I struggled to get in with Ryu, watching him die with little consequence. Luckily, Storm found her way in and took out a character and a half before losing while Morrigan finished the second character off, activated a Level 3 X-Factor, and got in with increased strength and speed to close out the first round. The second round wasn't much different, except for the fact that Morrigan had to do more work and was saved due only to a dropped combo by my opponent's Dante. 2-0, I advanced.
The second opponent, last tournament's winner Ken, had me worried. His team of Dante/Sentinel/Phoenix, has no trouble keeping Ryu out, and Dante's Teleport nullifies Ryu's fireball game. In short, it's an uphill battle. And it showed in the opening few seconds as Ryu ate either raw or chip damage from Dante's specials and Sentinel's drone assist until he died. Storm eventually got in on Dante and DHC glitched to Morrigan for a kill, but eventually died to Sentinel. Morrigan finished the job on Sentinel but had to deal with a 5-bar Phoenix and with less health and no X-Factor to boot, making runaway impossible. So I did the only thing I could do: kill Phoenix and watch Dark Phoenix come out and play. Eventually, I was put down to next to no health and pulled out a Hail Mary: use Morrigan's Level 3 super to try and punish Phoenix while she threw a j.HP projectile. When I did the move, both Ken and I thought Phoenix was entirely too high for a grounded Morrigan to hit. We were wrong. Phoenix ate the Darkness Illusion, ending the round in my favor. Ken's team came back in the second round without even needing Dark Phoenix, evening the match at 1-1 and doing so convincingly. The third match, once again, came down to Morrigan and Dark Phoenix, but with a fair amount of life and being able to force him to use X-Factor before me. In the end, with a small amount of life left but less than 3 bars, I used my second trump card: Morrigan's SRK Hyper, using the invincibility to hit Phoenix as she tried to launch a safe amount of chip damage at me from almost directly above me. In the end, Phoenix ate the Hyper before Morrigan ate any damage, and I took the set 2-1 in an upset and sent Ken to loser's.
On the Super SF4 AE side of things, my first round was a cross-tourney runback from Latino Link, pitting my Claw against his Fei Long. First off, let's just say that I like to say random stuff while playing this game. I mean, Vega. He has accessories. I like to call them his nails/Lee press-ons (claw) and his bonnet (mask), and he gets worse when he doesn't have his accessories. Second, I don't play the game as competitively as I once did, and since I use Vega I try to have fun. So, with all that said, I talk trash and get hype for the reaction. And two of Latino Link's friends behind me decided to do commentary behind the main setup. For the entire tournament. Couldn't have been any better if I arranged it myself.
Now. Back to the match. First round, I poked and poked and threw and poked some more and, oddly enough, took it somewhat convincingly, with a bit closer of a second round win. I started letting my guard down, and Link quickly let me know how much of a mistake this was with a VERY convincing second match win to tie the set at 1-1. The third match was intense, with Latino Link adapting to Vega's footsies and myself adapting to Link's patterns. In the 3rd round, I was down to a small amount of health, nothing more than a sliver, and I started mounting a comeback. After a few pokes and a throw, Fei was down to barely a poke's health, but I couldn't even take chip damage. I backed off a little, trying to bait a flame kick and waiting to react to a rekka via a jump-back HP. Instead, Link threw out an EX Chicken Wing, which I thought a crouch would evade. As it came down behind Vega, the very tail of the hitbox hit on a far cross-up, and I lost a match I thought I had won. Lesson learned and learned hard.
Immediately after my SF4 loss, I had to play Alex in winners' semifinals. His team of Magneto/Tron/Doom and my team of Ryu/Storm/Morrigan have played hundreds and hundreds of matches against each other, so we both knew the match could go either way. All three matches went very similar with Magneto keeping Ryu out as well as he could, Storm and Ryu keeping Tron out as best as they could, and our match usually coming down to Morrigan and Doom. In our 3rd and final match, a successful mix-up from X-Factored and Dark Forced Morrigan should have meant a victory. Instead, I dropped the death combo Doom was in and an X-Factored Doom didn't hesitate to use the opportunity to secure victory, putting me in losers' bracket for both games and giving Alex a shot at Murphy in winners' finals.
Feeling pretty discouraged after the loss, I was later rewarded with a win against DDRT's Adon (where I got booed for picking up my claw and risking a loss instead of taking an easy win from a whiffed Ultra) and my favorite match of the day: playing against "Magic Top Hat" Curtis and his goofy Gen. Neither of us are afraid to trash talk each other, we both play low-tier, and neither of us would walk away sad. So if I lost here, I'd accept if, and if I won, I'd feel good about it, but no matter what it'd be a fun time. Curtis took match one with some smart SRKs and a j.mp air-to-air combo into an Ultra, teaching me not to jump too much. I took match two with my standard poking, some links, a bit of trash talk, a taunt after an air throw, and a random EX Sky High Claw for a match-closer. Match three came down to the wire, but ended with a kara throw suplex and me standing up to yell "GET THE $%#@ DOWN THERE" as Gen hit the floor.
I expected to fight Latino Link again in losers' semifinals, but Des Moines player Kemps knocked him out with his Balrog, forcing me to play against a character with better pokes than my own that led to beefy combos. Nothing about the match was exciting to write about, but believe me it was a long series of pokes, throws, footsies that I can describe as nothing short of an uphill battle. Near the end, Balrog attempted to chip Vega out with an Ultra, and a sliver of health kept Vega standing to punish for the win. Unfortunately, this was the end of Vega's winning streak, as Charlie (handle "Grog") beat me 3-0 with a patient E.Honda, getting me 3rd place while Grog took 2nd to Iowa City's "NGamer" Blake. (And if you want to read about his tournament exploits, click the linky thing.)
I turned my attention back to MVC3 where a short match against Des Moines' Sonny in losers' bracket put me back against Ken in losers' semifinals. I'd like to write about some long match where I adapted to mistakes I made earlier and used information I'd gathered through our previous matches, but in the end Ken beat me quickly and easily, ending my day in 4th place. Ken would go on to knock Alex out immediately afterward and run a 5-0 streak on Murphy in the grand finals before Murphy turned on the heat and took three matches back on Ken with his smart and patient Spencer/Sentinel/Haggar team. The final match ended with a long, drawn-out runaway with 55 left on the timer to time out Phoenix without activating her Dark Phoenix side, giving Murphy 1st Place.
After an hour or two of casual matches, everyone packed up and left with many of us hitting up Zoey's Pizza for food and the nearby park for nearly two hours of frisbee and just being social. To be honest, this was the highlight of my day, and the reason why I love Iowa tournaments: because it's a good time with friends and, almost always, soon-to-be-friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment