Ascending The Wall

Competitive and social gaming, both the highs and the lows! @Somniacs

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2017 Year in Review - Blog Revival? Part 2 - SFV

Back again for Part 2 and Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

By far my most active game this year was SFV, entering many leagues, attending many locals and travelling to quite a few Asia tournaments.

May not be that well known but SFV S1 had me questioning whether I was going to stick around in fighting games or take a long break. Despite winning the S1 Couchwarriors ranbat league, the 8 frames of lag was a huge annoyance for me as a defensive player. S1 had me bugging out with how ridiculously easy strategy wise it was to play some of the top tier characters. 

Thankfully the minor lag reduction & S2 re-balance patch gave me hope of better days. S2 saw the rebirth of Dictator as an actual threat, no more getting abused by Chun/Mika/Ryu & v-reversals into set play so I decided to stick it out and see where it takes me.

It took me places I’d never been, like Taiwan

Dark Sided

So I started off the year 2017 by joining up with team Dark Sided.  One of the major reasons for doing so is that I saw all the great things they had been doing with ZG & Falco and they were proving that they were an organisation that cares about the local FGC. I’d been sponsored before, but it was a very hands off affair that never really went anywhere. I was originally concerned about a similar situation but Dark Sided not only proved themselves as a great team but a team that actually cares about their players. 

If you wanna check out the year Dark Sided has had, click the link below. Lots of great moments!

A twitter year in review for the team -

https://twitter.com/i/moments/943714052697505792

Hyper Magazine

The next big thing that happened in 2017 was pretty much a life achievement. I used to read Hyper Magazine as a kid at my local news agency and I never imagined I’d be featured in an article. Needless to say I’ve kept a few copies to reminisce about when I’m old and retired (just old right now, not retired just yet).

A full page spread in Hyper Magazine - A dream come true

Battle Arena Melbourne 9

The first major tournament that I attended in the year came around in May. 

The global Capcom Pro Tour Premiere Battle Arena Melbourne 9. I was doing quite well online and locally so my confidence levels were up there.

It’s also the first time I’ve got an interview on Capcom Fighters, which was an awesome experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI_tXf-zTx4

There was one major problem I didn’t account for though... for the first time in about 10 years I lost my keys on the way home on Friday night, the day before the tournament.

My spare keys were with my partner who was sleeping, far away & had work early in the morning so I was pretty screwed.

After about an hour of trying to break into my own place, I walked to the nearest motel at around 3-4am to get a few hours of sleep before the tournament started the next day. Needless to say the motel wasn’t exactly the greatest place to sleep but I did manage to get around 3 hours.

Next day my partner let me into my place and I was able to go get my keys. Rocking up to the tournament feeling like trash, I was knocked into losers in a relatively close match vs Tokido. Once in losers, BKsama’s Urien eliminated me. BKsama took me out and had a really close match vs Gamerbee next, just falling short of taking him out.

The main lesson learned here is always check for your keys - and if you do happen to lose them you have to try extra hard to stay on point (or get a lot of decent sleep) because the best players will notice and body you systematically.

Infiltration visiting Melbourne at BAM9

As a long time fan of Bonchan’s Sagat in USF4, it was amazing to see him run through the brackets at BAM9 and take out the event with a nerfed Nash. Especially when it was against such a strong Cammy player too!

The grand finals were sick and you can review them at the link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNIVBDsy7fc

Stay tuned for the next part! I’ll have it up in the next couple of days.

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2017 Year in Review - Blog Revival? Part 1 - USF4/MVCI/KOF

What’s up all!

Been a long time since I’ve even looked at this page and I wanted something a bit more permanent than a tweet longer as they seem to be mostly used for retirement announcements. In the interest of preserving a slice of FGC history, this blog is temporarily (?) revived.

So where to start with 2017? I’ve had many adventures this year to Asia and around Australia thanks to my team Dark Sided’s support. New opportunities that have never been available in previous years have made this year very exciting.

2017 World Warriors Falco (Chun/Ibuki), Myself & ZG (Claw)

Rather than talk individually about every trip and experience, I’ll just break it down to highlights and lessons learnt in regards to each game I was competing in throughout the year. As a quick side note, I’m really grateful to all my friends that I’ve met again and for the first time during my trips this year, definitely makes the travel worth it. SFV will be continued in Part 2, so grab a seat and some popcorn.

USF4 - The Final Chapter

So as many people probably know, I got into the competitive side of Street Fighter when Street Fighter 4 landed. I was an arcade rat for many years playing Street Fighter 3, but never really tried to push myself into competitions until 2009.

As such SF4 has a special place in my heart and any visit to Japan ignites my desire to play again. Any day of the week I could head down to the Arcades and get a game of SF4, while SFV was only really available to me twice a week at most. Naturally I ended up playing lots of USF4 when I was there last in 2016. Benching my long term main Dictator for the newcomer to USF4 Decapre so that I won’t confuse myself while playing SFV.

2017 Taiwan Reunion with Lingo (Gouken) and Reiketsu (Claw)

Through some rumblings in the scene here in AU, a competitive league started up for USF4 and it saw tournaments at BAM9, OHN and SXC as well as a local league at Couch Warriors ranbats.

I placed relatively well throughout the year, 5th at BAM9, 2nd at OHN and 1st at SXC/Couch Warriors league. 

While it was fun, I did notice that I was finding myself annoyed a lot while playing, getting hit by a lot of gimmicks that I never really had issues with before and mostly bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t play Dictator anymore.

It was extremely hard to practice the game, as there wasn’t a sizeable list of competitors anymore and at most you’d get to practice once every 2 weeks or so. Which meant that people were playing with rust on at all times and just attempting to gimmick each other out. Didn’t really have the same competitive feel like it had before.

I think with this in mind and with the fact that 2018 is going to be packed with new Fighting games, It’s time for me to finally call it quits on USF4 competitively.

With DragonBall FighterZ, Soul Calibur 6, MVCI, Tekken 7, Injustice 2, Fighting EX Layer & Street Fighter 5 AE in 2018 I think that people are going to be even less focused on USF4, so it’s probably time to “Let the past die” and look towards the future.

Marvel Vs Capcom: Infinite

This is a tough one for me, as I loved UMVC3 and spent a lot of my time trying to grind out the game. One of the first games to even get me into Fighting games was Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter - which Toxy always reminds me was “the boring one” because it wasn’t as broken fun as Xmen vs Street Fighter. I really love the series as a whole and have always enjoyed watching and playing the games.

MVCI started out very different to me, I couldn’t grasp how the game was meant to be played and it seemed like defensive play was an impossibility for the longest time. I reached out to a few people for some help and understanding of the strategy involved. After playing KillerKai a lot in Taiwan I had a bit of a better idea but I would say I’m still trying to understand the neutral game.

Myself & Burnout Getting wrecked by KillerKai’s Zero/Dante for hours in Taiwan

I placed 9th in the Singapore Battle of the stones event, despite having no expectations as by my own standards I’m pretty bad at the game. SXC was a fairly low turn out but I believe I ended up 5th.

Some of my concerns about the game were patched recently, with others still remain. The discovery of fairly easy unblockables doesn’t really help the game tbh. Post patch I’ve had better results, finishing 2nd place at the Couchwarriors Ranbat Finals to Toxy with a fairly large relative turnout. I want the game to do well, and I want the issues to be ironed out - I really want Marvel to take it’s place next to Street Fighter as one of the most hype games at EVO (even more hype most of the time). Hopefully the developers can address the remaining issues & potentially re-release the product like they did with MVC3 and UMVC3.

I’ll probably spend some time learning Strange combos because he’s pretty sick, but don’t expect too much from me results wise in this game when 2018 rolls around because my only strategy so far is “never get hit”. I haven’t forgot about my give away of an MVCI copy (1k followers!), I’ll be doing it fairly soon to one of my twitter followers but I still haven’t decided the best method to do it yet. I want to give it to someone who will get the most use out of it.

ANZ Players to watch in 2018: I think this is fairly obvious, Baxter will be one of the unstoppable few in MVCI in 2018. Outside of Baxter I’d have to say keep an eye out for Mason in New Zealand, and Canpakes (Betterpart) who plays an extremely cheap Fireband/Raccoon team. I’m not too sure how the unblockables will change the game, but I imagine that the good players will still remain good.

King of Fighters 14

I doubt it’s very well known, but I used to spend a lot of time playing KOF2002 in the arcades. I wasn’t any good, but I played. Mature was by far my favourite character, so I’ve had a habit of using her in every game she’s in. KOF13 was a game I lightly played, never really learned that deeply but placed relatively well considering.

KOF14 rolled around and we were excited to have a new KOF to play. Although, it was a broken mess the first patch - Birds were everywhere. Eventually the patch came out and I decided to get a bit more serious about it and try to actually learn the game.

I spent a fair bit of time trying to level up and learn the combos/hit confirms and just as I got to a level where I was starting to compete with the upper levels of the AUS KOF community (compete, but not yet defeat) my local scene all dropped the game.

My last major for the game was in Taiwan, where I got destroyed a few rounds through winners of my pool by a player called BALL. I had no idea what to do against Yuri as I’ve fought the character maybe twice in KOF14. I thought “well, I was bound to lose because there are actual amazing KOF players out there” and as it turns out BALL made it to top 5 of the event so I couldn’t be too upset about that.

Getting slapped up by Yuri

I really enjoyed playing KOF14 and it’s sad that I had to drop it off my list of games I was playing. Online was not that playable and I couldn’t get anyone to play me locally, there’s only so much I can do in training mode by myself.

Luong is actually one of my favourite characters of any KOF series to play and I’m hoping that a patch 3.0 revival brings people back to the game. 

Speaking of Luong, one of the highlights of the Taiwan Major 2017 was Kindevu’s amazing run in top 4. If you haven’t seen it - make sure you check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMZowG9ZoSE

ANZ Players to watch in 2018: I’d have to give this to Baxter as well, if patch 3.0 reignites the scene I imagine that he’ll be back on top of it with Falco & players like Chen/Kyokugen/AlexK there to challenge him.

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FGC Events this year!

Yo guys, going to break up the stories for a bit just to mention some of the stuff I'm doing this year in the FGC.

So far I'm confirmed for at least 3 events that I feel like I can't afford to miss on a personal level.

Buttonsmash 2014

This is held in Queensland, March 15-16 

Trailer here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbgE_LUxHyE

Back in 2012 I had attended this event and got fairly strong results but lost to myself in the top 8 matches that counted. One match that really stuck out as horrible on my part was vs Snow (Akuma) in the top 8, I really underperformed a let him get away with a lot of things that Akuma can't do in the Dictator match up. I can't wait for the opportunity to play Snow again and play to my potential. Other than that, Queensland is the home to most of the serious Marvel players in Australia. So it'll be great to actually play Marvel again because things have kind of hit a lull here in Melbourne. I've had quite a few close matches against Baxter in tournaments over the years in Marvel and I'm hoping this is the year I close it out on him. At worst, it'll be a good chance to hang out with my mates that I haven't seen in awhile!

If you guys like those ESGN profile pics, Buttonsmash was doing these in 2012 with a green screen and it was super funny.

The second event is

SEAM 2014 June 20-22 Trailer here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebf_gKxKwJY

Now I was already considering going to Singapore before July this year just for the purposes of training up, when Sgfinest released the trailer for this major I locked myself in to go. A lot of my major improvements in gaming came from my visit to Singapore, they just have so many talented players and it's also home to one of my buddies Xian.

The last time I attended, I actually got decent results with two top 8 finishes. This time around, I want to break into that top 4 and improve my results in SSF4 (It'll be Ultra by then).

The third event doesn't require an explanation.

EVO 2014

enough said.

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Reviewing the past years - the successes and the failures 2010 PT2

2010 PART TWO! here's the standard disclaimer that goes along with my memories. Disclaimer! I know some people are extremely sensitive about their gameplay/losses/wins or peoples opinions on it and in general just don’t like to be mentioned unless it’s for their success. For anyone who is offended if their name shows up here, just know it’s not at all personal and it’s more so a mental count of my progress to date in competitive fighters. If people want to call me out, so be it!

EVO APAC

I just remembered that before EVO there was EVO APAC which was the first time we had a qualifier to earn EVO points, this was also the first time Daigo had visited Australia during SSF4 days. EVO APAC MELBOURNE

There was actually a qualifier for EVO APAC (as it was held in Sydney) which took place in Melbourne and was run by Couchwarriors at a local bar.

The funny thing I remember about this tournament was being in losers, I think that Toxy had put me there and I had to vs an El Fuerte player by the name of Alvin. He was destroying me, and it was last game last round and I had no life left. He had 50% left, and I was basically resigned to the loss... but then...

Just as planned.

I randomed a Dictator ultra 2 while he was standing... and he just stood there and blocked... and died. He was like "what?" and all I had to say was "why didn't you jump!?". Needless to say, I lucked that one out (sorry Alvin). That was the last game Alvin had in tournament too before he went back to Hong Kong for good, so ... yeah. I ended up riding that win all the way to 2nd place, earning myself some money for the flight to Sydney. Toxy, as usual was first place (2010 year of the Toxy like I said earlier).

I had to fight my way through another Akuma though to get the chance to play Toxy. Ero_Oyaji at the time he was probably the 2nd best Akuma in Australia aside from Humanbomb so I was prepared for a tough fight, however I managed to close him out and start what seemed to be a very long rivalry between us.

The funny thing is that they gave away Street Fighter figures at the end of the qualifier, and there was only one Akuma left. So being 2nd place, I decided I would take it for a momento - which being an Akuma fanboy pissed off Ero_Oyaji haha!

I actually really like these kinds of prizes because they act as sort of act like trophies, I'll always look at this and remember how I won it.

EVO APAC SYDNEY

So not only had my win gave me some cash in order to fly up to Sydney but it also seeded me into the later stages of the APAC tournament. I didn't have to play until the Sunday which was both good and bad. Good because I got to play casuals for the whole of Saturday (I believe I got up to around 60 wins on one of the setups) and bad because I really wasn't in tournament mode on the Sunday.

For some reason, ever since my first visit to Sydney I've never done well in SSF4 when I travel there, I tend to under play or something goes wrong. Lucky that's not the case when it comes to Marvel, but that wasn't even around just yet.

Board games for $2 in store and $5 overnight hire - also Daigo.

Now everyone who was around in 2010 remembers Daigo's visit, and everyone remembers the thrashing he gave to us all. That was kind of a huge turning point for a lot of Australia's good players then.

People were understanding that a solid anti air just couldn't be challenged, and that they needed to find another way to fight other than just guessing when the opponent would fireball. I ended up playing Daigo in total about 3 times, the first being a FT5 MM for $100 on the Friday night, a 20$ MM on Saturday and a Guile 20$ MM.

Needless to say I lost them all, but it was all fuel for me to improve as I'd never played anyone this good before.

Daigo in the thick of many exhibitions at Good Games Sydney

Here's some notes when I review these matches

Session #1

The worst thing I was doing in this match was pretty obvious, it was holding focus and then dashing. Allowing Daigo to react and punish my dash really easily. Which he does both at 0:11, 0:49, 1:04, 1:17, 2:34 and 2:44. Also I never really challenged his jump ins.

Hey look, Daigo got hit by cross up psycho 0:23 who gets hit by that?!

I don't really punish sweeps, that's a free st.MK on block.

No DP when Daigo saw me focus AA at 0:39 , pretty sure he'd do that every time now.

Random Ultra at 1:49, I won't claim that was intended. I kinda just saw his characer bob forward and I thought it was a fireball hahah.

Honestly, re-watching this I feel like if I could transplant myself back into the past to play his Ryu with my knowledge now I would be so much better off. He's obviously grown a lot since these matches too and I really want to try to play him again sometime soon.

I actually recorded some other matches against Daigo, like Brodsta's (the original Dictator of Australia) where he just rushed down like crazy and some other stuff from the event but it's all sitting on my external HDD and I have no idea where to find it.

EVO APAC SYDNEY FINALS

So despite my 2nd placing in Melbourne, I actually didn't come close to what I had expected after I won my first match in top 16.

Somniac vs Vindk8 top 16

After I took down Vindk8, I played against Robsux who was playing Chun-li at the time. Now for those that don't know (and I didn't know at the time either) Robsux has always been a top 3 player in Sydney ever since the start and we had an extremely long match in winners.

Robsux vs Somniac

Robsux vs Somniac part 2

Managed to pull the match down to the final round but just got out played in the end. Once I lost to Robsux I immediately went on to vs NZ top Akuma player JackSmash.

I also didn't know who that was at the time, but I was pretty confident in the Akuma match. Although it really didn't work this time because JackSmash had a lot of different throw times, and for some reason I couldn't tech any of them.

It's really all I remember about playing that match, just getting thrown a million times and me mashing the buttons in frustration.  One of the spectators at the time told me after the match "you're doing it too early". And that is the first time I started to think about really using delay teching (true story, everyone just mashed tech back then).

Once again, I pose with my victors. Robsux on the left and JackSmash on the right.

So I was out, but I managed to watch the top 3 go ahead with Toxy in winners final vs Daigo. It was really a match that we all wanted Toxy to do the impossible, and he managed to get something from Daigo that no one had that day. He grabbed a game of him with a well timed demon (wake up demon when Daigo tried to overhead).

Toxy didn't manage to defeat Daigo however and it ended up being Toxy vs Humanbomb after that. I remember talking to Toxy about it at the time and he told me (paraphrasing) "He had to play like a nut vs Daigo, because if he played on his level he was for sure going to lose and that it took everything out of him mentally and he couldn't perform in the next match".

Humanbomb went on to try and fight against Daigo, but was struck with a kind of awe as Daigo was his inspiration for Ryu in the first place. He ended up going with Chun-li in the finals because he thought that may be a better match, but I think Humanbomb was already just happy enough to have won the 2nd place ticket/points to EVO so Daigo dispatched him uncharacteristically early.

Daigo accepts the prize he came to claim

Overall EVO APAC was a pretty amazing event, a lot of Melbourne traveled up there and everyone was gobsmacked at how good Daigo was. I remember a lot of players that aren't around anymore attending such as Zerolance (SA top player) who was one of my old PSN rank match up buddies and CrazyAndy who was a beast of a Gen player. Combomanic was there as well, previous BAM 2009 top 8 placer.

Zerolance before he disappeared from the scene!

Combomaniac showing up and beasting people.

So yeah, that's my "short" summary of the first time Australia got visited by Daigo, 4 years ago now.

I'm sure plenty of us have leveled up from that experience and if you don't believe that we are any better for it please review the old exhibition matches on the Ozhadou channel because I'm sure you'll find Australian Street Fighter looks much more clean these days.

Until next time, weary blog readers. This was another episode of Somniac Stories. Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion of 2010 PT3 EVO 2010!

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Dictator Match up list as of SSF4 AE 2012

Taking a break from my reminiscing in the past, everyone is up in arms about Vega finally taking a major. Here's a tweet from Sanford about it I'd like to reference before posting up my tier list for Dictator to make this all relevant.

Sanford ‏@SanfordKelly

So Vega/Sagat/Balrog have won majors before in sf4...Where's Bison :(

Here's where I'll post the match up list to explain why Dictator (Bison) just hasn't had the chance yet and most likely won't unless he gets a few good buffs in Ultra.

Also this is pretty true

Sanford ‏@SanfordKelly

@jchensor lol he has no anti air no damage no ultra

As you can see there is a big chunk of characters sitting up in that "hard category" and I've had a few conversations with Dogura and Neurosis about who wins what match. A few of the more interesting ones are as follows - Sagat vs Dictator

Commonly this is a counter match for Dictator in Japan. I've discussed with Gachikun, Neurosis and Bonchan about how they feel the match goes and most say it is a hard 6 to Sagat but Dictator can win if he plays well enough. I've actually had the pleasure of fighting against a lot of high level Sagat, unfortunately this was during tournament play and they generally bested me.

Vega vs Dictator

I had always believed this was in Vega's favour as he has a superior jump, an air throw and can out poke Dictator but Neurosis told me he thinks it's actually Dictators favour. I can sort of see why, but Dictator needs to play disrespectful in order to force a knockdown and then Vega is in trouble. I think the neutral game is in Vega's favour at least so that's why I've put it above even. This is debate-able depending on styles I think. Zangief vs Dictator "All Dictator needs to do is st.HK and he wins" biggest lie ever told by people who don't understand damage trade off. Zangief is Dictator's hardest match up to me simply because you never get any kind of big damage off on him and everything is a guess in his favour. Add that to the fact that I can never find any Dictator beating a Zangief in a set longer than best of 3 and you've got a match I think might even be worse than Dictator vs Guile.

At least against Guile, Dictator has unblockables and set ups to abuse his wake up - none of that works on Zangief! He's simply a random lariat, ex greenhand or SPD away from ruining all your work. Snake eyez himself says that this is "7-3 in gief's favour" and he proved it by giving every Dictator in the world a severe beatdown in sets. Juri vs Dictator I had always known this was a difficult match for Dictator, despite my relative local success against the character. She can give him major problems with zoning and Dictators answers are usually extreme guesses or can lose depending on timing. Neurosis rates this as Dictator's 2nd worst match up in the game. I don't think shes as bad as a few of the ones I listed as worst but I haven't yet played the same Juri's as Neurosis.

Fei-long vs Dictator

This is commonly thought to be a decent match for Dictator, but in reality the numbers don't match up. Fei's focus can negate a lot of the footsies game and the damage difference between characters is huge. Dictator needs to play extremely patient to win this and it relies on the Fei mentally crumbling in order to win. Neurosis and Gackt had a discussion about this and Neurosis stated "Fei-long 7-3 over Dictator" Gackt's response was "I think turtle Dictator wins" to which Neurosis said "turtle Fei beats turtle Dictator". I don't quite think it's quite 7-3, possibly a hard 6-4.

Guy vs Dictator

This match up is fairly bad as well, although Guy players will never admit that they have the upper hand because they are the ones attacking. The truth is that there isn't much Dictator can do, he can't anti air Guy reliably as all jumping attacks can be beaten by Bunshin Flip grab. His standing normals also don't do a great job of anti airing Guy and EX Psycho can be baited by simply flipping over Dictator. He can't jump at Guy because Guy's cr.MP is somehow a god tier anti air that allows him to hit from the back of his head.

In the neutral game, Guy's focus gives Dictator a lot of problems as it can snap release to punish st.MK pokes and his own st.MK/st.MP are good challenging buttons, but that's if Guy actually wants to play footsies and isn't looking for a random jump over your normals.

After scissor kick, Guy can challenge with either cr.LK, st.MP or st.MK depending on range and all are extremely good options that can lead to some big damage. On knockdown, Guy has armour run and 4 frame Ex Tatsu making it hard to mix him up and Guy can punish all of Dictators escape options with a combination of tools. The match up is basically only won by Dictator if he manages to suffocate Guy in the corner or lands an anti air ultra 1 because the Guy player was careless.

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Reviewing the past years - the successes and the failures 2010 PT1

It's still January so I better get this done with before it's too late. Disclaimer! I know some people are extremely sensitive about their gameplay/losses/wins or peoples opinions on it and in general just don't like to be mentioned unless it's for their success. For anyone who is offended if their name shows up here, just know it's not at all personal and it's more so a mental count of my progress to date in competitive fighters. If people want to call me out, so be it!

I'm not sure if I can really recap every tournament I've ever entered with any clarity. I do have a decent memory of past EVOs (2010 was my first) and the Australian majors since about 2010, all my fighting game playing before that was extremely casual so it kind of became unmemorable. I had to write up a kind of "BIO" for sponsorship so I have a decent list of my tournaments (and some stuff about myself I might post in the future) just so people think it's not a photographic memory or extreme vanity at play.

Ironically, the two players who knocked me out are visible in the same photo with me.

Battle Arena Melbourne 2010

Tournament: Annual State Championship

Placing: Somniac 7th place SSF4

Toxy, Somniac, Heavy Weapons - 2nd place team tournament SSF4

This was back when Super Street Fighter 4 was the bees knees and really the start of my rise towards winning some weeklies as my character got stronger overall from it's Street Fighter 4 iteration.

By the way, I play Dictator if anyone hadn't guessed from the icon at the top of my tumblr!

2010 was basically the dominion of Toxy and Humanbomb, these two players stood out far ahead of everyone. Akira had been hit with the nerf bat in SSF4 with the changes to Sagat and while he was still a threat he wasn't as dominating as before. It took awhile for Sagat players to get back into the mix and it showed in this top 8. I actually don't recall much about the tournament, other than having to fight against Hadouuken's Zangief (Andy for those who know him in Melbourne) to make top 8. I had been put into losers by Humanbomb's Ryu and had to face up against Sicario's Guile. This match I feel like I played pretty badly and I really hadn't learned that much in comparison to now. I had decent patience, but didn't know the proper ranges to challenge Guile and got beaten by some repetitive back fists which really aren't as good as they were made to look against Dictator. I had no real form of knockdown pressure which is really what you need to win this match and was kind of abusing EX psycho to try to build frame advantage (that won't work these days). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETfpNMc7agw&list=PL81780022353ACD2A Lucky enough there's still a video around for me to cringe to. I never really got a chance to play Sicario again, he moved back home to Chile and I never got that run back.

Although I got to see him again at EVO and he introduced what became a good friend to me, at the time not many people knew him but I guess everyone knows who @KaneBlueRiverCL is now. Regarding teams, it was really the Toxy show. It was pretty disappointing for me and Heavy Weapons that year and that kind of got some fire in us to make sure we keep up the end of the bargain for Toxy in the future team tournaments. Since then in particular Heavy Weapons has had some awesome team matches and I think when he has a team behind him he really gets psyched up to do the impossible. Overall I don't feel like I did anything amazing at BAM 2010, it was a pretty meh show from myself and while I should be happy with making it to top 8 I don't feel satisfied that I did everything I could have. I'll cover off on EVO 2010 in 2010 PT2 PT2 Teaser topics - Cosplay, Daigo, Sherry Jenix, ClakeyD, ShadyK, Fchamp. Any questions about BAM 2010 hit me up on twitter or below in the comments! @DB_Somniac

[somniax]

What's all this shit about?

Hello to one and all! Basically I wanted to start up this blog as a way for me to get more in depth with my thoughts about my major hobby in life - competitive gaming! I've been all over the place in terms of what games I play, from RTS, FPS, MMOs and currently Fighting games. I'm dabbling a bit more in to the competitive scene for Magic which I was in to as a kid as well because a few of my fighting game friends decided to pick it up so I'll make some posts about that as well. Why tumblr? am I a hipster now? Rest assured, I am no more hipster than I was before which is maybe a 4 out of 10. I just wanted an easy way to post thoughts and the alternatives just require too much messing around to make functional. I kind of want a chronicle of my journey towards EVO this year too, because it may be my last one I go to for some time. This EVO will be number 5, and after this I need to start saving towards having a house and settling down and being a family man so I got to make the most of this one. This EVO I'll be entering three games, Ultra Street Fighter 4, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and King of Fighters 13.