Bedsheets

Hey there, I was wondering if these casuals still happened? I got pretty hooked on watching people play this game (never had a partner myself) while I lived in Japan and it would be pretty fun to play the game now that I am back stateside.

I made it out to Super Arcade this last Saturday and had a great time playing P4AU with you guys! I'd like to do it again in the future, and in order to make sure I can make it out I want to make sure to get it off work. Is it generally held the first and third Saturday of the month? Just want to make sure that I request the right time off.

Buying a car via slapping a wad of bills on a table is definitely one of the more surreal moments of my life.

Nope, you pay each time you play, with 100 yen ($1) being the base line for most games. Most games have a card that saves your record or whatever, but there are no membership options. I got into a game for a while (10v10 third person mech game) that was 500yen ($5) for about 30 minutes of playing. Don't really want to think about how much money I put into that game. It's no real surprise that arcades are dying out as cellphone games claim more and more of the gaming market in Japan. The newest machine I saw in the arcade was Puzzle and Dragons, basically an arcade machine with a giant touch screen monitor emulating the cellphone game. You know things are getting bad when that starts cropping up.

On the topic of how to play against new players, I figure I'll add my two cents. I have lived in Japan for the last two years, but in quite a rural area. There are arcades, but most of the time there is no one there playing fighting games. When there was someone there one of two outcomes would occur: I would beat them rather handily and they would leave the arcade, with me having learned nothing from beating them. Or, I would die in three combos in a row, with each combo ending in a complicated oki set up I didn't know how to deal with. Once again I learned very little. I did learn something, but at 100 yen (a $1 a play) these were some very expensive lessons. This was before CP was on consoles, so really my only way to practice was at the arcade. So, I basically stopped playing fighting games for over a year. Now that I am moving back to America in a week I picked up CP again and am looking forward to joining my local scene and actually learning the game in an environment that is conducive to it. As for a question of my own, in fighting games I generally love characters with strong footsies. As a result I've been messing around with Ragna, Azrael and Relius lately. Anyone else I should be trying out? Any recommendations.

Awesome, thanks!

Sorry for the rather basic question, but, I am two weeks away from moving back to the LA area after having lived two years in Japan. Sadly, I lived in a very rural area and the fighting scene was basically dead there. I'd like to get into the thriving LA local scene though. So, when's the next Rebel Up? I know Super Arcade is closed right now. Is there a schedule online somewhere? I am having no luck finding it. Again, apologies for the very basic question.

So, I think I might end up playing this game again. I've been playing +R because I like GG more but it seems really hard to find GG opponents in my area of Japan, while finding BB opponents isn't that hard. And playing against humans is kind of important to getting better. I guess I can keep GG on the backburner until Xrd hits. In GG I play Potemkin but when CP first hit I was messing around with Amane, but I am not sure who to play. I guess the big turn off for me in BB is that I don't really like long combos. I was considering Tager but he really feels like a pale shadow of Potemkin. So who would you guys say has the shortest combos in CP?

Also interesting to do with Amane to get level 3 drill heat right out of the game. It is potentially an advantage you can leverage over the entire rest of the round.

Which fits perfectly, really. Urusai is what you say to someone when you want them to shut up, but, it more literally translates to "annoying" or "noisy" Can't wait to get off work, I finally have an open evening, can't wait to run off to the arcade. I really want to mess around with Azrael (after I learned about his 90% combo modifier and his 12k life, how could I not?) and Relius (his new moves seem neat). Ugh 1 hour to go come on clock move faster.

So, I have decided that I should probably mess around with characters other than Amane in BBCP and Relius seems really neat to me. I stopped playing BB before Relius came out, so, he is basically a brand new character to me. Right now I have been looking into old stuff about him and he seems pretty interesting. I think his new zoning possibilities could add a lot of stuff to the character as well. So, bearing in mind that I have never played Relius ever, so I am going to be rather miserable with him, are there any things you guys would like me to try or keep an eye out for about Relius in BBCP? It will probably be a day or two before I will be able to make it out to the arcade again but, I will try to make a list and take it with me next time I go and see what I can learn.

I really only got the chance to play against an Azrael on day 1 so far, and its not really a great idea to draw too many conclusions from that. I actually don't know very much about Azrael's mechanics.

It is not possible because the DD causes the drill to overheat on hit or block, and therefore you can't do either of Amane's DDs back to back. Even though 632146C is done with C and not D it is still fully tied to Amane's drill meter. Rishtopher: I have not had a chance to play against all of the characters, and most people mash start and skip the character intros anyway. I think he might have a special intro with Bullet? Not sure. Probably has a special intro with Carl based on his story.

Approaching Amane is a bit easier said then done. He has fantastic air mobility with his fabhops and some solid ways to punish reckless approaches. 2D and 6A are good answers to air approaches while you are on the ground. j.6C and j.5B are great for air to air approaches. 5B, 5D, and 3C all do solid work in ground to ground stuff. I don't feel like Amane is free to air mobility at all. Also, remember, Amane isn't a zoner. You have to worry about Amane approaching you as well. Shadow is a good player but he is just one Amane player, he is certainly not showing everything Amane is capable of. He goes for drills a lot less often than he could, so he builds less drill meter than he could. Getting your drill to level 2 and keeping it there isn't really that hard without using 6D. I mean, at some level you can break any match involving a rush down character to this so. Yes, its true. But, easy to say, harder to do. I just played about 15 Amane vs Amane matches this evening. Now THAT is a very momentum based fight. Pretty fun though!

No meterless reversal doesn't really seem like an issue for Amane's neutral gameplay. C button being essentially useless is just not true. You can get a lot of great mileage out of your Cs via fabhop canceling. 6D is not Amane's only means of charging drill. Drill stance (which you can quickly cancel into nothing) also charges drill. Also, I have hit level 3 without charging via drill stance, 6D, or ODing plenty of times. A little 5B>5D>fabhop>j.5D action nets you plenty of drill heat and some chip. I don't know what you mean by people "expecting" 6D. The only time I see you ever wanting to use 6D is when you know it is going to land. Which is when the opponent is blocking a ground drill. Using 6D at any other time is a pretty silly move in my opinion. Getting someone to block your ground drill is not that hard if you go for summoning the drill after a hard knockdown (mostly off of 3C, which Amane has a lot of ways to combo into). For some reason (he is still learning the character, we all are, after all) Shadow kept going for 236C off of his 3C, instead of going for drill oki which makes no sense to me. Unless you are going in the corner and can get some good damage, going for the drill Oki is much better. Blocked ground drill is a guaranteed 6D which is guaranteed level 3 drill. I am not sure if Nu will be a hard match up for Amane or not. I have not had a chance to actually play it yet. There is obviously no way Amane will win a zoning fight with Nu, but, Amane isn't a zoner. I imagine that Nu is going to have a pretty rough time with fab hop + drill pressure. The one time I played Tao was rough. If she gets you in a corner you are going to have a very bad day. But, then again, Tao liking to be in the air a lot does help Amane out some. Still, probably not the best matchup, but, like I said, I have only played it once.

I don't think I would call Amane's neutral game awful at all. What makes you say so?

Looking like I won't be able to play too much this weekend but I did get a bit of vs CPU action in earlier today. Mostly just getting some basic stuff into muscle memory but I did have a couple interesting finds. I was curious as to how OD interacted with amane's 632146C super. We knew it scaled with level, and that OD made it stronger, but, when you OD it takes time for your drill meter to reach level 3, what happens if you do your super under OD but the drill is not level 3? Unfortunately, a level 1 OD super does not do 3.5k. It does 1.9k (instead of 1.5k) and launches the enemy a lot lower than the level 3. The OD adds the explosions that do extra damage, but how many extra explosions is based on your drill meter level. After seeing people use the invulnerability of OD to evade moves, I was hoping that we could always be able to do OD 632146C (back to back invulnerability) to punish certain moves for 3.5k. It is still a thing we can do but, how much damage we will get is based on drill level. I also learned that you can do this combo: level 3 drill: 5B>5D>Over Drive Cancel (ODC?)>632146C for 4k damage. Well, I got it to redbeat doing 3.8k and I had it bluebeat when it did 4k. I think that was just a timing error on my part, but, it is possible that if you let too many hits of the 5B and 5D connect that the combo may drop. You can potentially combo afterwards as well, but, both times I did the combo it killed my opponent so I did not get to try. I remember seeing Shadow do a combo like XX>j.236C>RC>632146C which is nice to finish out a round but does require 100 meter. I believe you should be able to substitute the RC for an ODC if you need extra damage or don't have the 100 meter. I think that is it for now, I feel like I am forgetting something but, maybe not.

People will learn to play respectfully around an Amane with a drill at level 3. Like how you play when Arakune has you cursed. His drills are only unavoidable if you let yourself get knocked down and then have to wake up into them (and then you still have invulnerable and/or counter options). People just aren't used to a character that can do solid chip damage. I usually manage to steal a round or two while people are getting used to it, but once people adjust to it, it really isn't that big of a deal.

Apologies for this not being 100% Amane related but since it came up on this page: How does SMP work in BBCP? Can someone either explain it or link me to something that does? I remember hearing stuff like it lets the opponent auto tech but it sure doesn't feel that way to me.

Not teching and taking less damage is fine by me. As long as I get to safely 6D and get my drill to level 3. Ground drill scales pretty well at different level. Size and duration goes up. The drill is pretty big (like, almost the height of a character I want to say) at level 3 and lasts for a good while. A bit of a double edged sword though. When you have a ground drill out and active you no longer lose drill heat over time. Since you are level 3, it means the drill will stay out for a long time. And since you are level 3 you want to be using those powered up drive attacks. But, you don't want to overheat and go back to level 1, so the lack of meter decay can be a problem. I believe the hitstun/blockstun from the ground drills is very minor, including the last hit. Its just that it hits very rapidly. So, yeah, throw mixups are an interesting possibility. 5D and 2D feel like regular normals in terms of gatlings to me, but I have not done exhaustive testing by any means. I don't know about OTG with 5b. Most of the OTGing off of 6C that I have seen has been with j.5C. Worth testing. 623C does not seem to give you much time before they can tech. Certainly not enough time for set up a ground drill or something of that sort. It does give you enough time to be able to set up a meaty though, so, it should still be nice for corner stuff.

His other drill moves do not charge the meter that much, you are correct. However, they are the drill moves the scale much more heavily with your heat level. 5D at level 3 heat is a monster, 6D at level 3 heat is an overheating liability. Making the enemy eat/block a 6D is basically your chance to set your drill heat to whatever level you want. However, 6D is incredibly unsafe. Slow start up, slow recovery. Against characters with no ranged attack if they decide to go full screen you can charge some. But really, the only truly reliable way to make someone block a 6D is to drop it on them while they are block a ground drill. And the only truly reliable way to make someone block a ground drill is to score a knockdown on them. Scoring that first knockdown so you can set your drill level is huge for Amane. This is one of the reasons why I really like ODing at the start to get level 3 that way, I feel like it allows me a much more flexible starting game plan. CT knocks back on the ground and staggers. I feel very confident in saying that you will be able to combo off of it (otherwise it would be like, the worst CT in the game). I just did not have the presence of mind to follow up with anything.

How quick you can attack after you hop is a great question. It is pretty quick, though, I am not sure if there is a minimum time before you can attack. On to the testing list it goes! 3C into backwards fabhop would let you either do j.5B if they run at you or j.5C if they don't (I think the block stun would be short enough that they would have some movement options). And if they block the j.5C then you can forward fabhop to continue pressure. Seems like a pretty good set of options off of a blocked 3C. Skype is VoIP yeah? Could be useful for some of you guys, but, due to timezones and living on the other side of the world I probably personally wouldn't get much use out of it.

It sadly does not auto track. It does however, never extend past the end of the level (unlike ground drills). So, it has some definite applications in the corner in combos and could punish people trying to jump out of the corner. I have only ever seen someone land the hand grab (623C btw) in a non-corner situation once. Also, to clarify something on my last post. 5B>5C combos very nicely on opponents that are in the air.

If you can land a close to the ground j.2B it launches the opponent and you can go into Amane's big time damage combos (5B>5C>6C>236A>j.5C>j.6C>j.2C>236A>j.5D>j.236C type of stuff). Off of the j.5B you can potentially get stuff like 5A>5B>3C>Drill Oki or 5A>5B>5D>fabhop pressure. So, yeah, that seems like some really strong follow up stuff to j.5C. Good find! Edit: WillWork4Instal: Not really. 5B doesn't combo into 5C, except for perhaps at very specific ranges, and it would probably need to be a counter hit. Amane's really basic combos are 5A>5B>3C for knockdown or 5A>5B>5D for damage.

I have been trying to think if I noticed anything worth mentioning in my games from yesterday, and all I can think of is: CT does not launch the enemy into the air when it hits a grounded opponent. It sends already airborne opponents skyhigh but grounded enemies stay on the ground. It pushes the enemy a good distance back and puts them in a good amount of hitstun. I was too busy being surprised that I landed my CT to follow up but I imagine that C follow ups are pretty much guaranteed. Possibly forward fabhop into j.5b or other follow ups are possible. Speaking of j.5b, I feel like it is perhaps Amane's most important normal. It covers a lot of space, it stays out for a long time, and most importantly it seems like its hitbox is a good distance from Amane's hurt box. I am pretty sure if spaced correctly that most enemies AAs will not hit you (stuff like Ragna's 6A) and possibly it will even tag the enemy. j.2B and j.5D however will get stuffed pretty handily by AAs. So, I think we will need to train our opponents to not want to throw out their AAs using 5B, and then once we have them blocking we can go either for stuff like j.5D chip or j.2B crossup combos. I'd say his most important specials are actually his fab hops. Amane didn't really make a lot of sense (the range on some of his moves, the angle they attack at, etc) until we started seeing people using more fab hop cancels. Obviously they play a key role in a lot of his combos but it is more than that. Take for example this pressure series that we can see Shadow doing in his most recent video. He goes 5B > 3C > backwards fabhop > j.5C > forward fabhop > j.5b > 5A > 5B > 5D > forward fabhop > j.5B. Without using the fabhop Amane lets the situation reset to neutral too often. Using fabhops allows us to correctly position to follow up on our attacks and keeps the enemy on their toes. As for non-gameplay related stuff. I think splitting things into a gameplay only thread and an everything else thread makes a lot of sense. It should be fairly obvious what should go into what thread and should help out people that are just looking for raw information. I am also fine with things staying the way they are. I am flexible. Also, in a further effort to help separate the wheat from the chaff if anyone has a question for me specifically or a thing they want me to test specifically, feel free to send me a PM.