7/10 Fire and Dice Smash 4 tournament Road to Evo Edition

So I attended yet another Fire and Dice Road to Evo Edition Smash 4 tournament. I had work that day and they called me in early so I didn't stay to watch all the matches. But from what I played and what I saw, it was a good day.

First off, I won my first set on stream. It was against this Yoshi player going by the tag Smooth. His Yoshi skills were on point. You can watch the set here. Set the timer to around the 16 minute mark and that's when my set begins. As you can see it was a great set. His style was pretty interesting but once I got into the groove of the fight I started to play better and get the KO's that were giving me trouble. It's a great feeling winning my first set on stream. Although I only took one set it was the highlight of my tournament career. I felt like a million bucks. Smash has taken me far not only as a player but also my confidence as a person and a gamer.

After I won 2-1 my next set was against Void-one of the best Sheiks in SoCal. Hell, he might be one of the best Sheiks in the world at this point. I played him game one as Bayo and he annihilated me. I couldn't do anything and got two stocked instantly. I switched to Sheik game two because I knew I couldn't win with Bayo and I wanted to test if he would play differently against another Sheik. The interesting thing is that he did play a bit differently when I switched to Sheik. It was almost like he respected me more or something, its hard to explain. However, I did manage to put up more of a fight and put a little percent on him before he two stocked me. Again, even though I lost playing Void was another highlight of my smash career. He's one of the best players our region has produced and the fact that he came to our humble local tournament was awesome.

Lastly, I'd like to talk about a great set I saw before I took off for work. It was Bam, one of the premiere smash 4 casters from SoCal against K9SBruce, one of the PR (power ranked player) Sheiks. K9 went Diddy this whole set and Bam was playing Bayonetta. Bam's Bayo took me by surprise here. I've seen videos of him playing from Mega Smash Mondays or Wednesday Night Fights but seeing him play in person makes me think that casters can be as great as pro players-if they stick with it and keep improving. The crazy thing is that I heard K9 ended up coming back from losers and winning the whole tournament. What a player.

Basically in every game K9 combo'd Bam super hard with tons of strings (combo connections). Once Bam got to high percents he was able to bring it all back with short succinct combos. His rage (smash 4 mechanic: at high percentages you deal extra damage and send enemies flying farther) got to high enough levels where he was able to KO Diddy with simple stuff. The score was 2-1. I couldn't believe that Bayonetta could come back from high percentages against Diddy. Bam played smart and carefully, something I need to learn how to do if I'm going to keep playing Bayonetta in tournament.

All in all it was a great tournament experience. Probably my favorite Fire and Dice tournament so far. Looking forward to going back on Thursday and giving it my all. I've learned how to play in tournament calmly and not worry about winning or losing. It's all about playing the game to me now. And that's just the way I like it.

Fire and Dice sm4sh tournament, The road to Evo edition

So today I finally made a return back to tournaments after a hiatus. That was because of work. I usually never get Thursdays off but today I was finally able to make it. It was a great experience and I even played well. I've gotten so much better at the game even though I haven't been to any tournaments for a while and I don't get to train with anybody really good. My only training was an all night session I had on For Glory (the online mode), which is sort of frowned upon in the tournament community because they all think its bad because it trains you into playing with lag. There's my friends I hang out with on the regular but lately we haven't been playing smash. Instead, we've been going out to the beach, working out, playing YuGiOh!, and working our asses off to make money.

I got to the venue pretty early before doubles (2v2 matches) and there was already a good amount of people there. I started playing friendlies with this random guy with long hair and it turned out to be awesome. I got bodied sometimes but other times I completely wrecked him. Very even. He had a strong Ryu, that's for sure. Way more people showed up and eventually we found out there was like sixty people that signed up for singles. Needless to say, there wasn't any friendlies going on until late in the evening when a lot of people left. This tournament wasn't completely stacked but there was the usual PR (power ranked) Socal players like K9SBruce (Sheik), S2H (Metaknight), Aphro (Bayonetta), Zenyou (Mario), Rich Brown (Mewtwo), Zork (Bowser), and Nicko (Shulk).

I got called to play my first set right away once singles started. I played some young guy that went Kirby. He had good spacing but I overpowered him with Bayonetta. He switched to Robin and it was super close. I thought I was going to lose but he sd'd (suicide death). However, it was so close that he might've lost anyways. Plus, I was ready for whatever he had in store if he had won. It was a pretty clean set for me and I bodied his Kirby. It was great! I felt like I had more matchup knowledge than he did against Robin because one of my best friends has a super good Robin.

After some waiting I went to sit down against my next opponent. K9SBruce. One of the best Sheiks in Socal. However, he went Diddy against me. But he didn't hold back whatsoever. He was getting me in so many linked chain combos it was ridiculous. I lost fast as Bayonetta. Game two I switched to Fox and gave it a go. At first I was getting in a lot of good hits and some short chains. I even taunted! On accident of course lol. I lost but I went down fighting. I had him well over 100% which to me is an accomplishment saying since I'm out of practice and I was going against one of the best players in the area. The best part of playing K9 is that he gave me some great advice. What a guy! Later on I watched him play more of his tournament matches but he didn't do so hot today. Part of it I feel is that the nerfs hit Shiek hard but another part of it is that some players have to be "really feeling it" to play well and I think he's one of those players.

After more waiting around I played my last set against a Samus player. Game one he outplayed me but I still played well. Game two I played better but I sd'd after getting an early kill on him. He started to wreck me hard but then I figured out his style and adapted. We were both well over 100% but he got off a clutch charge shot that finished me off. I was a little upset because if I didn't sd I know I would've taken it to game three. But as the smashers say,"we take those".

Also, I almost got the Bayonetta zero-death combo on him where you take them over the top of the stage and kill them. Close but no cigar. This guy was like the first guy I played. He was a young guy that was good but probably not more experienced than me when it comes to tournaments. If only I didn't sd. Oh well. I can't see it as a bad thing because I almost brought it back after killing myself. It shows that I've improved despite not having good training partners. Kind of nice.

After that I got some Subway, came back to the venue, and watched some of the high level players duke it out on the big screen. My favorite set was grandfinals which was Zenyou (Mario) vs Nicko (Shulk). It was a great set. At first Nicko was bodying Zenyou with all these great Monado sword hits. Nicko's spacing was amazing and he was doing all these short hop fairs and nairs. It was so cool to see someone play Shulk at such a high level. However, Zenyou adapted. He started pulling off these amazing Mario chainlink combos that usually ended with Mario's up-B coin jump attack, even getting the final KO with it. Although Nicko lost the set he went down fighting, rightfully earning that second place finish.

I also enjoyed K9 versus Aphro. I'm a big fan of Aphro mostly because he plays Bayonetta and he's one of the better Bayo's in Socal. He has an interesting style that doesn't rely on the zero-death combo stuff or divekick. Instead, he relies more on spacing and a lot of backairs for his KO's.

Rich Brown (Mewtwo) had some great games versus Nicko (Shulk). They had a pretty good set where I thought Rich was going to take it but then Nicko switched from Marth to Shulk and it was like a whole different ball game. That was a pretty fun to see. 

After a bit I got to play a few more friendlies. Won some, lost some. It was a great time overall and it was great seeing all my sm4sh friends that I haven't seen in like two months because I've been at work on Thursdays. I might consider trying to get Thursdays off on a permanent basis to get back in the tournament scene like I was earlier this year. Something to figure out for the future. I look forward to doing better at the next one I attend. Here are the top players placements.

1st - ATRAKT | Zenyou [Mario]
2nd - FAD | Nicko [Shulk/Marth]
3rd - eM | Aphro [Bayonetta/Rosalina]
4th - NIPS | K9sbruce [Sheik/Diddy]
5th - PG FAD | Zan [Toon Link]
5th - 2S | SM [Corrin/Ike]
7th - A2 | Dynamo [Sheik]
7th - NxT JP | SoCalGohan [Mario]

That's all for now. Watch this space.

Smash tournament at FAD 3/3

     Today was a great time at Fire and Dice's weekly smash tournament. There wasn't too many people at first but later more people came. I can say that I played great compared to last week although I still have a lot of work to do to prepare for the next tournament. I did amazingly well in friendlies, defeating people endlessly multiple times in a row, even with some of my off characters. But when it came to my actual tournament matches I ended up sding (suicide deaths) twice in two different matches. Sd's are unacceptable in competitive smash and I really need to work on that for the future. Part of it is that I'm still not completely sure about everything Bayonetta can do with her recovery. I still have to work that out in the lab, aka training mode. Let's talk about my sets.
     My first set was on stream (a first for me) against Pluto, my first ever opponent that I played at my first tournament. Back then he was a Captain Falcon main but these days he's rocking Meta Knight, a pretty solid switch. I started off the set with a bang, playing pretty well against him even though he's a much better and more technical player. He won game one but I like to think it was pretty close. I got the first stock with a clutch witch time but once he started getting his up-air strings everything just started going his way. Game two was more good spacing from him and me trying to get in and out with some attacks. Again, once his up-air strings started working out the game just went in his favor. To put salt in the wound I ended up killing myself on my last stock. Not that it was close that game anyways but it was a bad way to go on stream. He ended up sding himself too so its all good. I'll try to find the video of me on stream because that first game wasn't bad at all for me. I was going toe to toe with him! Lol, it was awesome. I've definitely come a long way from my first tournament days. You can watch the set here http://www.twitch.tv/fadgames/v/52214336, set the time to around 6 minutes and that's when the match starts. It looks like I have complete control of the situation but then he just comes back with the up-airs. I feel like a couple more clutch witch times would've helped a lot because he's a very aggressive heavy type of player. But it was a good set and he's a good player. I hope I can face him again on stream sometime.
      My second set was against Captain Andrew, this Sonic main. He was pretty good but I felt like I lost because I don't know the match up. Plus I never get the chance to play good Sonic players. He pretty much just ran around at the speed of sound and grabbed me a lot. Once I was in the air he kept doing a lot of up-airs and there wasn't too much I could do to get out of it. He never approached or fought me straight up he just kept running around, which I guess is what Sonic is suppose to do. It was a little disappointing losing 2-0 super quick to a Sonic main but I should've known the match up more. I shouldn't have just been playing on autopilot during that set because you really have to change your play style and go for the punishes when fighting Sonic otherwise he'll just run circles around you. He ended up losing in a close set later against my friend FuzzBallJones, who was playing Roy.
     All in all it was a good time. I ended up going home early because a lot of my friends weren't there. Its just not the same without them ya know? I'm a little ashamed of going out like that on stream with the commentators even saying "Pluto won" before the game was over and crap like that but its just a game and I can improve. Even though it looked like Pluto was all over me I would still say that I was holding my own. I've been improving every tournament I go to. My neutral game has improved a lot over the last couple weeks. I'm still figuring out a lot about the game. For example, I'm not sure if I want to keep using Bayonetta. I might go back to using Zero Suit sometime soon. There were a couple great players that I haven't seen there before. There was this kid who played Villager that took out Rich Brown convincingly. I didn't really watch too much of the matches on stream today though because I was more into playing friendlies this week. Gotta keep playing and keep improving!

Fire and Dice Smash tournament 2/25

     Today was just one of those days where nothing worked out for me. Unfortunately that was what went down in my tournament matches as well. Before the tournament I was hanging out with my friends in the morning and we decided to go to some no name Mexican restaurant that wasn't very good. They messed up my order and then made me pay extra for the mix-up because my meal was more than whatever they gave me. Then later on when I got to Fire and Dice I went to this pizza place called Fretteli's and they messed up my order as well. I ordered a large pizza with bacon and pepperoni and instead they gave me a small pizza with bacon and pepperoni. In the end I guess it was ok because they decided to give me the small pizza for free and then make me my large pizza as well. I ended up sharing a lot of the extra pizza with my friends and some fellow smashers. This isn't really bad stuff but it really got to me because I was super hungry when I ate at both of those places. To put more salt in the wound, earlier in the morning my friend and I played smash and he's not better than me or anything and I just got bodied super hard, a lot of the time barely losing matches. In the last match he zero to death-ed me with Gannondorf and I just walked off the stage and left the room. I've never been that salty before to do that but there's a first time for everything. Today was just not a good day. But I digress.
      In my first set I played against Jinx, this really good Rosalina player that I saw playing doubles with Aphro. I just got bodied. He played a super campy defensive Rosalina, focusing on punishes. I don't think I played bad against him but I did sd (suicide death) in one of the games. I would say overall my neutral and spacing has gotten much better but there are sometimes when you can't do much against a more skilled player. I was playing Bayonetta in both games. It was a fast 2-0 for him.
     My second set was against Abyss, a random character player. He doesn't really have a main. He's a cool guy and we've talked before but never got to play until today. He played Lucina game one and kept breaking my shield with her side-B sword charge. I kept falling for it and getting shield broken and forward smashed. This happened three times in a row! Needless to say that game was over fast. Game two I switched to Zero Suit Samus and he went Game and Watch. This game was much closer but again, what can I do when my opponent is much more skilled than I am? I'd have to play a perfect game without any mistakes and pull a rabbit out of my hat, which didn't happen unfortunately. In the end it was another quick loss. I lost two sets in the blink of an eye. It was the worst I've ever played smash in tournament ever. I was pretty salty but I still said good game and stuff to the guys.
     My reaction to playing my worst day of smash 4? Just sitting down and taking it all in by playing some friendlies and talking to friends. This didn't help at all because I was in such a bad mood and funk that I just kept losing every game to dumb stuff. I kept doing dumb stuff and getting hit by dumb stuff. Everything was just terribad and I couldn't focus on the game at all. I'm thinking about listening to music when I play at tournaments just so I can calm down and focus. Today just wasn't fun. But there are going to be days like this and I need to accept the fact that people are just better than me at the game and that it might take be months, if not years to surpass them. I consider smash a big part of my life and I want to become good enough to get top ten at Fire and Dice but the more I go, the more I realize that it's becoming insurmountable.
     I watched a few games but I was kind of detached from everything. I saw my friend lose to a Sonic because he sd'd and lost his momentum. My friend Saladin played really well today although he sd'd in a crucial game three. One of my Simi Valley friends beat JeDi using Toon Link. I didn't really watch any of the high level players today but I saw Aphro pull off this sick Bayonetta combo where he took his opponent super high into the top of the stage and killed them. I've gotta learn how to do that if I'm going to seriously play Bayonetta. As far as all the salt goes today, after writing about it and venting I'm honestly not that upset. When I got home I played some matches on For Glory and did pretty well, until I lost a game because I was timed out by a Greninja that just kept running. In the end its just a game and there will always be players striving to be the best. Everybody has bad days. I just have to put in more hard work and effort, and just keep playing the game. Hopefully, I'll be able to take these guys out sooner rather than later. Thanks for reading, peace out. 

Fire and Dice smash tournament 2/18

     Today was a sick smash tournament at Fire and Dice. It was a relatively small crowd this week and there were plenty of setups so I was able to get in a ton of friendlies before singles started. I met this guy named Daybreak (Falco main) from Michigan and he was pretty good. But I was able to beat him a couple times with my Zero Suit Samus. It was pretty good because he's one of those players that places top ten at locals in Michigan. Overall I played really well today although I still went 0 and 2. I can't be too upset because I played well in friendlies and I almost won my second set against my friend Fuzzballjones, a player who is way better than me. What an upset that would've been.
     My first set was against the best player from Simi Valley, DJDemon (Captain Falcon main). This guy just absolutely destroyed me. I haven't felt so helpless in a long time (lol). It was like the first tournament I ever went to and I went up against this guy Sean Pluto (another Falcon main) and he destroyed me in like twenty seconds. This guy beat me even faster than that. I'm exaggerating but he is a really good player. I can see him placing high at Fire and Dice if he keeps coming. His style is just so fast and aggressive that its hard for me to choose options to go for, and then suddenly out of nowhere I'm taking the knee to the face and losing a stock after a few combos. I don't even really know if there was anything I could've done against him that would've helped me. It was one of those sets. I went Zero Suit twice and lost pretty fast. I played him in friendlies before the tournament so I knew what to expect. I had confidence in myself because I've gotten so much better after only just a week of practice but this guy was on another level. This was really the first tournament I played in where I had a lot of confidence in my playing. It helped a lot during the second set.
     The second set was against my friend FuzzballJones. I thought he was going to go Roy so I didn't play Zero Suit because I don't like that match-up. So I went Bayo and he went Corrin. Corrin is his secondary. First game I beat him pretty convincingly. He was just getting hit by all my attacks and I just took the game. Second game he beat me with his Corrin but it was super close. Game three he decided to play Roy. He kept getting hit by pretty much all my attacks and it ended up being a close game with both of us over 100%. It was close but he ended up hitting me with some weird attack that took my jump. However, I do think I could've recovered back to the stage if I used Bayonetta's recovery a little differently. I was suppose to side-B then up-B then side-B again, I think. I'm not really sure but I still feel like I could've made it back to the stage if I had used the recovery in the most effective fashion. I don't know if I would've won but it would've been a big upset to beat Fuzzball because he's a super good player. I had it really close. I'll get him next time! He said that he thought he respected me way too much but honestly I think I've just gotten better at the game. I learned that Bayonetta is one of my strongest characters and that she's perhaps even better than my Zero Suit Samus. I'm not sure if that's true but for now I'm going to play a lot more Bayonetta at tournaments and see how I do.
     Lastly, it was fun watching the high level players duke it out. Grand finals was Zenyou versus K9 (Mario vs Sheik). At first Zenyou looked super good and was annihilating. But eventually K9 came back with a bracket reset and took the tournament. I felt like K9 was winning with the same kill move over and over again but somehow Zenyou kept air dodging and getting killed. I was secretly rooting for Zenyou but I really dig K9's Sheik style as well. Also, K9 versus Ahprho (Sheik vs Bayonetta) was a cool set. I would say that Ahprho is my favorite player that goes to Fire and Dice because he plays the same characters I do and he places high every week. I think that could be me someday if I git gud. I think today he got third. His Bayonetta took out Zork's Bowser and Zork is pretty much the best Bowser around. It was a nice little chill tournament today. I kind of prefer when there's less people because I can focus on the matches and play my best. I played really well today and I'm going to start playing more Bayonetta. I'm looking forward to next week for more tournament action!

Smash tournament at FAD 2/4/16

     So I went to yet another tournament at Fire and Dice. Fad has become a home away from home and its been a blast going every week. I actually played really well overall today although in my tournament matches I didn't play at my best.
     My first match was against this Mario player, really young kid. I thought I had it in the bag because I'd never seen him before there and I usually crush newcomers. Instead of picking Zero Suit Samus (my main), I went for Bayonetta and played a great game. I beat him game one and I was feeling super confident. Then in game 2 he went for the usual Mario shenanigans (uptilt, grab, upsmash). He took game 2 and then it was all to be decided in game 3. At that point I should've realized that I wasn't going to win with Bayonetta but I chose to stay her. I don't really remember the game too much except for that it was a really close game. I lost to the usual Mario stuff. I wouldn't say he was better than me but he still won.
     My second match was against this guy that was friends with a friend of mine. He played a mean Mewtwo. I brought out Zero Suit Samus and he took me out no problem game 1. It was not even close. Game 2 I switched to Fox and I started annihilating him. I took the first stock pretty quick but then somehow he started to adapt. He started blocking pretty much all my attacks and instead of switching it up or grabbing him I kept attacking him over and over again. He eventually took my first stock and continued doing the same thing. In the end he ended up winning. I should have really switched it up because I had that game in the bag. One of the things I need to learn is to change up my game plans mid match and not get tilted whenever someone counters it. I felt like I had the advantage too. Although this guy was a way better player than me I still feel I had the advantage because Fox just annihilated Mewtwo (imo). He played great overall tonight and I think he ending up getting 7th place or something. That tells you that he's in a different league than I am, yet I played so well against him that first stock! Oh well, next time I'll do better.
     Before singles started I played a bunch of friendlies against some random guys I'd never met. They looked like newcomers to the tournament and I asked them if this was their first time here. They said they were regulars. When we ended up playing I ending up slaying them pretty badly. It was a lot of fun! One of them played Yoshi. His Yoshi needed a lot of work but it seemed like he had the basic fundamentals down. I already know how to play against good Yoshi's because one of my best friends mains Yoshi. Every general Smash bros player plays Yoshi, he's super popular, like Mario. The other guy played Mewtwo. He beat me once. I'm beginning to see the inner power within Mewtwo because of all the good Mewtwo's I played tonight. I saw Rich Brown in action (a super good smash player from Brawl), the guy who beat me, and this random guy I met that I was playing friendlies with. They all played super good Mewtwo's. I never really took Mewtwo seriously until tonight because I saw how great he actually is. Anyways, in the friendlies against those guys I played amazingly with Corrin and Bayonetta. Later, I played some friendlies with some super good players that were friends of mine. Although I sometimes won because of suicide deaths (sd's) I did beat them in fair fights where they didn't sd, just not very often. To me that's a good day. I've definitely improved at Smash. I'm pretty proud of myself and plan on working harder to keep improving.
     Also, this was the first time at a tournament that I really enjoyed watching the top level players play. It was exhilarating watching K9SBruce (Sheik) play against Nicko (Cloud). They were going at it and it looked super even but K9 eventually took the set, but not before losing two games. Super close set. I'm not sure but I think K9 took the tournament.
     Then there was Dynamo versus Brandon (forgot his gamer tag). This was a super close Sheik versus Captain Falcon set. They both won two games and had to settle it in game 5. I'm not really sure what made Dynamo take that last game because earlier in the set he was having trouble. I'm glad he won though because he deserves it. And its great that Brandon is competing because the last time I talked to him he said he doesn't enter the tournament probably because he's unsure of his skill. I've played some games with him before and I never got close to beating him. He's a monster who will probably place higher at the tournament in the future.
     The best set though hands down was Rich Brown versus Nicko. They played and it was awesome. Nicko's cloud is super aggressive and heavy on aggro and Rich's Mewtwo kind of had to attack and counter attack a lot to stop Cloud's momentum. Nicko ended up beating Rich pretty convincingly. I think Rich got sent to losers but he won all those games and made it back to play against Nicko again later.
     This time Rich Brown knew what to do. This is probably what separates a top level player from a great player. He adapted so quick and knew exactly how to handle Cloud this time around. But it was still super even. They both won two games and it was all settled on game five. Rich switched to Olimar and he was doing work. I think Nicko lost because of one fatal mistake that cost him his stock. They were both over 100% and Nicko had limit charged up to full. I guess he felt like this was his last chance so when he hit Olimar off stage he jumped off stage and used his limit cross slash, missing Rich because he was above instead of where Nicko thought he was going to be. So Rich just spiked him and won the game. Nicko was really upset, understandably so. I've come to realize that when top level players lose they get super mad, sometimes even making a scene. The thing is that Nicko played great. He just messed up with that limit attack. It was super cool to see a high level Olimar player in action. It was like he throwing pikmin 99% of the time lol. It was kind of insane to see Olimar go toe to toe with Cloud and do so well. I guess Olimar is a much better character than I previously thought. Also, Rich Brown is just a great player. He's definitely one of the best players at Fire and Dice.
     All in all this was probably the best tournament I've been to in terms of how much I enjoyed everything. I played a lot, watched a lot, and learned a lot. I'm going to keep going and keep getting better at the game.