Smash Tourney at FaD 1/16/16

      I did really well last night at Fire and Dice's weekly Smash 4 tournament. I surprised myself, that's how well I played. This was a very light tourney with only 17 people entering. The people were good but they weren't good like Larry Laur or Zenyou, two great SoCal players that go to FaD quite often. Let me tell you about my matches.
      My first match was against this really good Ike player. I've played good Ikes in tournament before so I knew what to expect. This guy was great but in the first game I kept using Zero Suit Samus' somersault kick and took his two stocks with that move when he was over one hundred percent. It was really good stuff, I can't believe I got those hard reads both times after coming from deep off the stage. Surprised he didn't shield. Game 2 he kind of knew what to expect from me. I just ended up getting hit too much by dash attacks and just getting beaten by Ike's long reach and range. My somersault kick tactic didn't work anymore. He kind of knew my playstyle by now but he was still having a hard time. Another thing to keep in mind is that on Game 2 we played on Duck Hunt, which was making both of us whiff attacks a lot. Game 3 I went in and I played really well. But in the end he ended up killing me with a forward smash. I think he was at like 88%, it was a super close set.
      My next match was against this Captain Falcon player. I think he was using the tag Captain Gold because he went gold Captain Falcon costume. He was really good but I'm not sure if he was a regular at tournaments. I think he might've been more of an online player and he was just testing the waters at tourneys a little bit. His Falcon was really good and it gave me a little bit of trouble. Game 1 was really close. But Game 2 I just pwned him! It was great finally beating someone in tournament. I haven't done this since my first tournament and this was like my third tournament so I'm kind of experienced at this by now. His Falcon was good but I seemed to have a better understanding of the fundamentals of the game. Also, I was getting in a lot of the hard reads. He rolled a lot and I could expect and anticipate when he would roll in front or in back of me and punish.
     Because I won my second match I was still in the tourney. My third match was against this Jiggly Puff main. We played in friendlies earlier before the tournament started and I could barely even touch him, he was that good. He's just a young kid that has so much potential at Smash 4. He's better than Hungry Box at Smash 4, he's really good. His neutral game and spacing is just so good with Jiggs. It's like he's in the air all the time. I tried to do the same with Zss and do the same thing he was doing to me against him but it just ended up in a loss in Game 1. Game 2 I tried to switch it up and play patient and wait for him to mess up and then try to punish. But he just never whiffed an attack. He always hit me or always got away from my attacks. I could learn a lot from him but ultimately he ended up losing to this Mario player that goes by the name of SoCalGohan. Great name!
     SoCalGohan ended up taking the tournament. Free money for him basically. I don't think anyone there gave him any trouble. I saw him play this Shulk player, a Bowser main, a Ness main, and a Rob main, and he just annihilated all of them with ease. He did all the standard Mario stuff like the constant up tilts and head butt confirms but he was so good that he was improvising combos on the fly. It was great watching him combo the hell out of all those characters. It was great stuff.
     In the end I had a lot of fun. I did so poorly in friendlies that I didn't win a single game. However, I did learn a lot more about the game and I played really well in my tournament matches. I also made some new friends. It was fun. After the tournament ended I went to the bus stop to head home and while waiting my friend called me and picked me up because he was in the area at a poker tournament. We ended up chilling at his place. I brought my Wii U over and we played Smash 4 and Mario Kart 8 for a bit. I think he really liked Mario Kart because of the online mode. It was sick playing with him. Then we figured we'd play some PC games. And then I said why don't we stream.
     So we started streaming Starcraft. The stream went pretty well and it was cool having his webcam for the stream as well. Now, I'm getting back into streaming and I think I will keep at it and try to make something of myself as a Twitch streamer. My channel is twitch.tv/megaman1597, check it out when you can. I just finally got the settings just right on my computer to the point where it looks good (not blurry) and has good performance. It took a while messing around figuring out the settings using Open Broadcaster. I'll probably have to figure out more stuff when my webcam gets here. I'm going to try to get a new PC monitior (one with hdmi) so I can stream Smash 4. But at the moment I've been streaming Starcraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex-First Assault. Streaming is fun but I think I have to learn how to be more interactive, and talk more while I play, which can be a bit tricky in the beginning of learning how to be a streamer. Check out my twitter page https://twitter.com/fig_land for updates on when I'm streaming. Stay tuned for more content!