AtTheGates

ok, where to start? i just arrived back in frankfurt from maybe the best tourney with the fiercest competition i've been to, and i managed to fullfill (almost) all my goals...and maybe even surpass them. xenophobian, miridor and me arrived on friday noon at the location. friday was all about sfa3, cvs2 and vampire saviour mini tournament (in which i got a very close 2nd place with my chipp-substitute gallon, haha). we had casuals until early in the morning with people like sicfi (definately among german top 3, eddie & venom) and loki (fucking sick johnny)... later on reaver, slashz and the slowenian guys (or was it saturday? holy shit it feels like a distant memory already). i did ok on the friday casuals, kekken, junior, sicfi, loki all played roughly 60:40 against me. i had difficulties against kekken's zappa because i wasn't familiar with the MANY (4 different ghosts) setups. he terrorized me with the dog, it was horrible. since junior plays potemkin (and up until the team tourney i had NO gameplan against pot) he butchered me alive, i was way too aggressive and lost my temper. you'll see me dying a horrible death in the team tourney against him, haha..but chun_li1 was there to save our honor, killing junior, mr. X, then closely losing to kekken. later on i reflected and thought about a gameplan against pot, then i did a lot better against junior, roughly 50:50 with chipp, and around 55:45 for me in pot mirror :D i didn't play too well against sicfi's venom, his zoning, ball setups and general movement are impressive. i felt reluctant to attack as CHIPP! that should say a lot. more on the matches vs. sicfi later. cuongster was owning everyone with every character as always, and was very helpful, no matter if a noob or a pro player asked him stuff. in fact, he showed me stuff with chipp that immediately improved my gameplay by a lot (and i wouldn't say i lack knowledge with chipp, lol). saturday. the main tourneys were held and took FOREVER (3s and tekken5...btw the tekken5 crew is a bunch of lazy retards, they didn't bring TVs, complained that the entrance fee was too high but still requested to play on big TVs....). actually i can't really remember what happened on saturday, since the whole tournament felt like one big, short (even though i played until 6 in the morning every day) meeting. the team tourney was lots of fun, and i more or less organized it myself, since it wasn't planned at all. making a list of possible players and then playing their pimp and searching teams for them took me so long. anyway, the event was fully recored (including the scrub teams losing to the good ones...edited this, i remembered it wrong, haha). sunday. now here is where it got so exciting. i'll talk about all my matches in detail as far as i can remember. my first match was vs. ultima, austrian eddie player. what saved my ass was a good balance of patience and rushdown, and some new stuff i improvised in the corner (i did my usual knockdown combo, gamma blade, but instead of a long chain only 2p, let them stand up, 5D, totally surprised a LOT of players. you'll see it in the vids against kekken.) and then i ALREADY forgot who was next, i think mr. X. i did ok vs. him in casuals with a slight edge, but in the tourney i dominated (perfect 2nd round and almost perfect on the others). next was loki, who sent me to the loser bracket. he owned me 2:0, i made some stupid mistakes like very high slow shuriken, which he punished, and stupid crap like failed airhthrows with HS, i land, he mangles me... stuff i would do again later against cuongster, cause i was so nervous. you'll see in the matchvids, its a disgrace, but on other moments i played very well...more on that later. anyway i gotta admit i forgot against who i had to play then, i just know at one point i had to play against sicfi, who lost in a close match to junior in winners bracket. kekken and junior met in the loser bracket, kekken advanced after 3 exciting and close matches. they know each other very well of course. so the winner of me vs. sicfi would have to play against kekken. a while before the match with sicfi i had some casuals with him, in which i played well. the offense just worked out the way i wanted it to without too many mistakes and i paid attention to stuff like dead angles etc, punishing and baiting what i could. this gave me confidence, and i guess thats why i managed to beat him in the tourney. meanwhile loki and cuongster advanced in the winner bracket until they met in winner bracket finals. here the trouble started, since the tournament started late (as always, since people are lazy and stupid and never do anything themselves, especially searching their opponents for prelimns) loki and sicfi had to leave for their train before the tournament was over. loki took it very cool and wasn't too pissed, even though he played so well and would have gotten a definite 2nd place imo. then my match with kekken was on, it's the first one that was recorded, and slowly a crowd began to gather for the last matches. i have to say i played very well, being careful to avoid summon, seeing tick throw attemps and missed meaties & punishing them with 2p into combo etc. in one round he completely destroyed me with the dog, i was clueless what i could do, beta blade is useless since it hits the dog and zappa gets knockdown with his 6hs. we had a very very close 2nd round, in which i had like 1 inch of health left and he had raou out, i never thought i would make it, but i did...in the face of death i did a gatling into flaming fists, overhead kick, FRC, and then i wanted to simply throw him. but in the last moment i realized he could do DP and i FDed, like i thought it came, i punished it and won the round. the crowd went nuts and i was really reliefed :D after that the organizers decided that i got loki's spot since i was the one with the next highest ranking, and kekken would get mine. i played the winner bracket finals against cuongster, i lost 2:0. like i said before, i was nervous and made many mistakes. i fucked up my tick throws (too early, too far away, 5hs comes out, etc.) and the stuff i said before. in one round cuong did a long combo with 2 FRCs, i bursted at the end, he punished me, i died..it might even have been a perfect. then i played against kekken again and managed to beat him a 2nd time. i can't remember much of that match, i think what i said for the first match pretty much goes for the 2nd, too. i have to see the vids to make comments onwards to finals. 2:0 for cuongster. even though i made mistakes i had moments where i was very focused and managed to take 1 round off of cuong each match. phew, so much for that. what can i say now that everything is over? i feel burnt out, but very happy at the same time. i learned a couple of new strong strategies, learned to adapt more to my enemy and observe his playstyle more closely. and of course more experience in matchups that i really didn't know much about (zappa, pot...playing pot and playing against pot is a different thing, haha). my goal was to get a top 3 ranking, but when i heard that the slowenian guys and sicfi&loki would come, my hopes dropped to max. top5. what can i say, 2nd place with that competition (and some luck since loki had to leave), i am more than contempt. phew, i need a break, i've been writing on this for more than an hour

lol kasou :D i already thought about what i could contribute. lemme say that 6p beats 41236k from faust :D (i admit that isnt much, but i will update this blog on monday, sunday is a MAJOR german tourney with guests from many countries...i cant fucking wait!!!!)

at least 50 matches of chipp vs. dizzy this weekend. and new confidence in knowing that cracking the defense of a good player is very, very hard with chipp. you have to work like a bitch. close S rushdown is good, but it's so hard to land a tick throw against good ppl. also, if you wanna learn FDC drop, better make sure you can do it PERFECTLY. i mean, an error margin of 0 pixel. and in other news, i think i discovered a "better" way of doing my FDC which could make it a LOT stronger. gonna update on that later, once im sure. chipp vs. dizzy is probably horrible to watch, dizzy running away, chipp trying to chase her and vice versa... and it's also very tiring. i had some good results with superjump j.D against her air dashes and air movement, since the superjump makes the j.D somewhat safe, time to dash / do whatever afterwards without fear of landing and getting butchered during landing recovery. i was surprised by the new frame trap stuff dizzy is relying on. little holes for ice spike, or 2hs FRC can lead to horrible damage, and with some skill, her pins are quite long (not as long as reload of course, and more holes, but still..). some stuff: 5hs is your friend vs. anything, even as anti air. anti air 5hs on CH, 5hs, j.D. nice damage & easy to do. 2s can help to hit dizzy when she is doing a close scythe for pressure out of a string, you can hit her and (kinda) stay out of danger at the same time. also, her fish 2p/throw rushdown is dangerous. best bet is to stay cool, block normal / with FD, and if you think a throw will come up, try throwing yourself. jumping out is impossible, the fish will hit you (or her OS s if she is doing offensive OS). so much for dizzy. she might be low tier, but she can fucking annihilate you if you don't watch out.

maybe after all this cooled down we can delete the flaming, only to leave the constructive stuff. little list of good chipp players to watch out for: - horisusumu or in short susumu (ススム): winner of 2nd gg gigs tourney, featured in 2 3v3s on a-cho (but only gets to play in one of them) - torowa: matches can be found on game41 on an irregular basis.

ex chars are banned. most tourneys play on default (some set a higher amount of rounds, 5 as opposed to 3)

evaluation from charts (how much a certain character won vs. another character), impressions from pro players. hard facts, usually.

uh.. you do know that it's a combo movie, right?

read the manual plz.

chinese dvd rip vids sigma posted seem to be from this year / last year, it says UCG cup and posters for tougeki 06 can be seen.