26 - 30 March - Dutch invasion in Stockholm

6 of us dutch vf players have planned a trip to stockholm in march to play vf and do a little sightseeing maybe.
As not all of the players have met eachother, i thought it might be a good idea to start a thread to say hi, maybe organise some dates we could meet up and where. Maybe the stockholm guys could give us some tips on travelling and nice things to do in the city.

I'm really looking forward to the trip as I've heard a lot of nice things about the city and am looking forward to playing against totally new styles of vf play.

I play Jeffry as my main and switch around a bit with my second, I guess I have put most of my time into pai and sarah as backup chars.

See you all in march

 

So uhm, it seems this thread has died. Time to bring it back up to the front page!

I'll be coming along on this trip as well.

I'm a Brad player with a sideline in Lion and an as yet pretty noobish Pai.

And I hope I won't be freezing my nuts off while I'm there.

 

Whats some good food we have to try? I heard the bread is really good in Sweden and I can really enjoy a good slice of bread /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

 

The degrees are on the + side of Celsius right now, so hopefully it won't be too bad by March. Global warming is good for something I guess, eh? I'll call in the expertise on the food issue, we have top men in the field...top men.

I'll prepare a list of addresses and phone numbers for you guys as well.

 

Hi to all the Scandinavian players.

My main characters are Wolf and Lei Fei.

See you guys next month. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif

 

hotel is booked! this is our location:

http://maps.google.nl/maps?hl=nl&q=Flemi...z=15&iwloc=addr

 

That was a really good find since it's only a few minutes walking distance from Dragon's Lair.

http://maps.google.nl/maps?hl=nl&q=Flemi...z=15&iwloc=addr

 

haha, it was kind of a coincidence, but a very nice one indeed /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

 

Good times, everyone!

It was nice to finally meet the rest of the Swedish VF players and we even had a surprise visit from Manjimaru, who was representing Finland! Great weekend for offline European VF /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

I will upload some videos today, I only have half of the videos I took with me here, though. The rest is with Ake, so until I get those when we meet up again, or until he uploads some, those will be impossible to get online.

Anyways, I loved it in Stockholm, such a beautiful city! I'm definitely going back there some time to check it out a bit better, we played too much VF to do that this time, haha!

You Swedish guys have something great going on with that Dragon's Lair. For everyone that's never been there: it's like a big gaming centre, where all kinds of people show up to play all kinds of games.

When you first go in, there's all these Magic: the Gathering posters and some warhammer models on display, but then when you walk in, there's only people playing World of Warcraft. Since the part of DL where they play fighting games is so far into DL, we saw that basically every game is represented in some way, at least as far as board- and cardgames go. It's a really great idea to work together with all these separate communities to build up something where everyone can just come in and enjoy whatever game they feel like playing. Good stuff!

All the way in the most remote part of the basement of DL is where the fighting games are played. They have like 10+ tv's scattered across the room (most of them not in use, just stashed away under some tables) and some arcadecabinets (set on free-play!) that play games like tekken tag and 3s. Aside from the bad ventilation, it was a perfect place to play.

Maybe it would be a good idea to hold an offline tournament there, some time?

Anyways, we had great games there, I was really impressed by the defensive skills you guys showed us, it definitely inspired me to take my own defense to the next level, as well as work on my offense (my 6pp habit has once again cost me a lot of matches /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif ). As Jeneric already told me, I need to work on my hit-confirming (as do all of us Dutch guys). Since our defense and punishment is often sloppy, hitconfirming is often not really necessary in our games, but you guys taught us that you can't really do without that stuff against proper players, haha.

Some player-specific props:

Bob: Gotta start with my fellow WCG-goer. As far as I am concerned, you're the best player in Sweden. Your defense is really top-notch. Your throwescapes and fuzzy were really giving me a superhard time. It was also very nice to see you were so quick to react when something of mine would whiff over your head, or I would stand around delaying for too long. I'd always get jabbed or elbowed! Also props on using those sabaki's reversals so nicely when being pressured by the same moves too much. I'm gonna work on what I should do when playing Akira, because I really didn't know what to do against some things! Good games! If I somehow make it to China for WCG this year, we gotta have some more games!

Jeneric: Nice Vanessa! I really don't know enough about her to properly play against her.. You were really using all those moves and setups I had never seen before and it was really freezing me up, I was constantly doubting myself: 'Is he at frame-advantage now? Is he gonna use those nasty sabaki's again?'. I was constantly thinking about what you were gonna do, instead of just focussing on my own game. Great stuff. Also, you were always escaping my throws! You knew exactly what throws I wanted to use in what situations (like back throw when I wanted to switch positions) and escaped those accordingly, that was really impressive man, never had anyone do that to me before /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

Skatan Milla: My old DOA rival! Nice games! I'm glad we finally had the chance to do some offline VF games! DOA was fun and all, but VF is the real deal. Nice spacing /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif it was fun to trade pokes at a distance with you, gotta love those 3k's! I was glad I was able to predict your Eileen flips, somewhat. I remember when I started playing, you would use those flips and I would totally freeze up. It was nice to see I could stop you from doing them now /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif . We didn't play too much, but the games we had were fun! I hope it's not gonna take another year before we meet again, haha.

Simon: Good Games.. Man, I'm so happy I played a lot of games against kingofvf4, it really helped me out against you! I was already used to a lot of the setups you used, so I didn't panic as much as I did against some other players. That 66p to wallcombo is too scary, I usually don't see that kind of damage unless I'm playing against Jeff or Wolf... good stuff!
I think we only played one session, but I definitely want to play some more games against you, man! Next time, for sure!

After playing the whole night on friday, I kind of had a lack of sleep, which really affected my concentration on saturday and sunday. I just couldn't think of solutions to the problems you guys presented me with, which kind of frustrated me.

In the end, I found a lot of fields I need to work on, so even though I couldn't win as many matches as I felt I could, I'm still satisfied because of the things I've learned /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

Thanks for the games guys, hope to see you again soon!

PS: I will start uploading some videos now and I will make a separate thread for those, so we can keep this thread clean.

 

Was nice meeting you guys, ggs. I feel like I sucked hard on this trip, and you all played really well.

I had big trouble dealing with the delay-saturated playstyle and constant EDTEGing. Unfortunately my chances of training against that kind of playstyle here in Finland are very limited /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif

 

Hi everyone, I had a great time in Sweden. It was lots of fun playing against characters I had little experience with. Now I know the true power of Vanessa /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/wink.gif I am glad I was able to play long sessions against all of you.

I want to thank the Swedish hosts for arranging such a good place to play VF. We played there 4 nights in a row and there was only 1 night we actually had to pay. Very nice.
You were also very kind to help us with our quest for good food every evening.

And now some props:

Bob: I really liked watching your Akira in action. And of course it was great playing against you. You mount such a good offense whilst maintaining an almost unbreakable defence. I envy your ability to punish every high move you duck. We had many close matches which is nice.

Jeneric: If I should pick anyone I was the most impressed with at Dragon's Lair it's definitely you. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/blush.gif You adapted very well to everyone's characters/playstyle. And generally speaking you were very hard to hit sometimes. I also thought you where great at whiff punishing and setting up Vanessa's throws. All of our matches were like an uphill battle for me. Too bad I haven't seen your Jacky in action.

Skatanmilla: Your Pai had many nasty tricks up her sleeve. You used all of her tools very well. It seemed to me you were able to block many low moves on reaction. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/cool.gif You were throw escaping like a madman.
I had some really exciting matches against you.

Simon: From now on I have a lot of respect for Aoi. I always laughed at her low damaging juggles and bad frame data. But you made me see what Aoi is all about. You had some mad throw setups from all those move/string cancels. It really drove me crazy sometimes. All around I thought you had a very elegant playstyle whilst putting an large amount of psychological pressure on your opponent. Good games. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

Manjimaru: Another Akira player. I liked your agressive playstyle combined with good ETEGing and fuzzying. You played a different Akira than Bob does. I wish I had the time to play your Kage or Sarah too. Maybe next time.

Thanks for everything, guys!

Yrvin aka Seiko Killa

 

Hi guys!

I will write a few words now, and some more tomorrow or on Thursday.

First off, it was a very enjoyable weekend for me. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. We Swedes are really fortunate that you chose to come to here for your first(?) invasion. You just missed the good weather though, today and yesterday it's been almost eight degrees on the plus side with no snow. In the summer time, Stockholm is much more beautiful! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

I can say that the time us players in Stockholm (Jonas Simon Skatan and Me) have spent to practice and prepare our VF-game for your arrival was instrumental in our successful defence of our Fosterland. So practice really seems to be the best course of action for everyone /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif .

It's been a long time since I wrote player-oriented comments after a session, hope I still have it in me ^^ . I'll use your VFDC-nicks so it's clear to everybody who I'm addressing. Here we go,

Ake: Glad you didnt drink as much at Texas as you do when playing shun, we would have had to carry you home! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif
The games with you were mostly me trying to be a coward, running away from you and choosing carefully when to attack ^^ . How did they seem to you? Anyway, what I figured during our games was that you know very well yourself where your difficulties lay, and that you much prefer to be on the offence than defence. Game play-wise, this shows when you use "wall"-type of defensive manoeuvres that have the potential to stop the opponent cold, like evade->mule kick (or neutral p+g), or the low kick. The result is that the opponent will often freeze and wait you out, enabling you to go on the offence. Your offence is similar and leads me to believe that the opponents you often play against are often attacking against you, even when it should be "your turn" to attack. You used a lot of "setups" against this behaviour. But this style will give you trouble against certain types of players, because the risk vs reward is mostly negative for you unless you can get a really high damage output, which it seems shun di generally lacks. The upside is that you can somewhat negate the advantage that the opponent might have in traditional defence techniques. But it is still my belief that your game needs to include more basic defence and nitaku, so that you can _choose_ when to do "special" tactics rather than using them for dealing most of your damage, thus enabling you to win more games. It would also be good for you to study or explore more options in situations which are hard for you, so that you can pressure the opponent into taking more risks. Against akira this would include how to escape the catch throw, escaping forward and down forward throws more often, and get a clear picture of what you can do after blocked SDE as well as getting a decent fuzzy guard. Otherwise it seemed, to me anyway, that you had a creative way of tackling the game and that you want the games to be exciting. PS I like your watch /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif .

Sp00n: We played only a little, but you seemed to have a good grasp of Aoi to me, using a lot of tactics that Simon hasn't been able to use as well as you. Especially the back back+p setups got me all the time, and you used the full circular kick at the right times. I believe Simon would have a lot more to say to you about your game play. But you, like Ake, seem to know where you have to improve, even saying yourself that you too many times use the same throw or attack pattern, and this is something that you can definitely work with and improve on as the games progress. With all the other players in Holland you have a good opportunity to become great, so I dont think you should quit if that is your concern with the game. But if you do quit, I'm glad you at least got outside in the world to play one last time because that's where it all really starts - and no-one wants to stop before they even start, right? Hang in there! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

Vortigar: Man you know so much about comic books! I will check out the things you recommended for me, I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy all of them. I was impressed and agree completely with your thoughts about Sandman, that the mythology was the most intriguing part of the stories and that it really wasn't explored enough in the series... After thinking further on this, I believe this goes for many of Gaimans other creations as well /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif . Anyway, about our games; I really cannot comment on your lion play because that is Jenerics domain (my biggest loss in VF, 1-52, was against Swedish lion player Shmolz.) So about your brad, I'd say it was the best brad I've played as of yet except Kiwes (sadly couldnt come to the invasion) and perhaps Jenerics(?). I believe the best path for you is to progress slowly, one situation at a time, because Brad (and Lion) are complex characters and their game depends heavily on knowledge about the opposing character. Compare with Jacky: lower damage output than Brad, but where brad has got different risk/rewards against every character depending on their moveset, Jacky has got pretty much the same situations against everyone and needs to employ much fewer tactics to be successful. It's also a lot easier to create and force a nitaku with Jacky than it is with brad, and brad has a hard time doing come backs because of the uneven damage output from his options, and the guessing required to land the big damage. My advice to you is to gain more experience by playing and creating as you go. At the moment, you have found some successful tactics and setups that you can win with, but if the tactics are beaten you have to adapt faster and instantly come up with the next answer. Which I believe takes a lot of time and experience to accomplish with Brad, a little bit easier with Lion. I dont have any concrete advice, but it's not my style to give such help anyway... so final words are:
Every thorn on your path
Every day that will pass
Every lesson you learn
And every scar that you earn
On your Braddific Jihad
Will make you closer to God

Oh a last thing for today, I REALLY have to complement you all on your English and how easy it was to communicate with you, you also didnt have the shitty humour that the Germans have which is a great plus 8).

I am so happy that we got to play you all.
Next time we meet, lets drink some more and better Beer and have some more and better Games /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif .

Cia ~

/Bob

 

I feel compelled write a bit more. It was really obvious to me how the top Stockholm players play each other very frequently and at high level. All 3 had very tight defense: Bob, Jeneric, Skatan seemed to be pumping out EDTEG's if not ETTEG's in their sleep, in the bathroom, while sipping the morning tea. Bob summarized ther philosophy once while talking to someone: "always fuzzy, always EDTEG, since whiffed EDTEG is quite hard to punish". And what bothered me more was their offense, which was equally homogenous, infused with delays designed to beat said defense. Even Simon, who was tad weaker on throw escapes, got the attack timing down pat.
The work they had done to improve their game was staring me in the face, so all power to you guys. I lost my matches against Stockholm players with the same 2-10 or 3-10 numbers each. It was like I was fighting members of a pro-team, they were all so similar in defense and offense, while at the same time sporting few character-specific tricks too.
Out of dutch players I remember Krye who had really tight attack patterns especially in okizeme, and Seiko Killa who had learnt the delay attack timing well enough to resist the Stockholm rampage. Vortigar, thanks for playing me, it was relief to play someone I could actually beat, heh.

Of course, feel free to comment on my play. Although I am well aware that my frustration of dealing with Stockholm defense and offense led to a wealth of input errors as well.. In addition to my age-old weakness of 2p-deficiency.. which is naturally the side I played 90% of the matches. I got maybe 1,5-2 hours worth of videos but Im not sure what I do with them.. They are painful to watch for me.

edit: Sorry for speaking in 3rd person but im too tired to fix this now

 

Good games to everyone of you who came, it was a fun gathering even though I was coming down with the cold unkowingly (I just thought it was a headache). But I still think I played close to the best of my abilities so I'm not putting anything on that, special thanks to Jeneric who gave me an asprin! I don't think I played Eileen well at all for some reason that weekend so I later just used Pai the rest of the gathering I hope noone minded that.

First of all this applies to all dutch players as a piece of constructive criticism, you absolutley -need- to work ETEG into your game and also use throws more often because they're a really strong tool in this game. I know that all of you can probably do double or tripple throw escapes while evading into guard in training mode so you just have to make an active effort to put that into your game while you play. That, and you all need to work on your movement so that you can get out of dangerous situations easier and force them easier.
Another thing is that most of you didn't seem to hitconfirm much which lead to you getting punished more than you should or putting yourself in unnecessarly dangerous situations.
Those were the three biggest areas that I took notice of that should be improved.

Krye: Yeah it was fun playing, though I wanted to have played much more against your Lau since I need more experience against him, but I managed to pick some stuff up that I could get damage from (like ducking 6PP and 3KP), which also leads me to yes I would also love my 3K even more if mine also had a third followup that was a safe on block launcher, lol! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif . Your Jeffry was all about the knee, too much if you ask me, but you were very good at timing it to catch my evade attempts after moves that I can't fuzzy after, which hurt a lot, you also pressured well with 2K+G and 4K. Your Brad was good as well but I could notice that I could avoid a lot of things since I've played a bunch of matches against Jeneric's Brad so I didn't walk into setups that often and being able to duck under stuff like 2P+K into the high launcher.
All in all I think your strengths are that you're good at keeping pressure after you get a knockdown and mixing it up so you should focus more on working on your defense now so that they both become equal!

Manjimaru: I know you're dissapointed in yourself but I actually enjoyed playing against you the most because you forced nitaku so often that I really got to use ETEG a lot more than when playing the dutch since they didn't force that kind of guessing game like you did. You had very nice movement too and you could get out and back in for a sneaky throw fast which was pretty impressive. It's true that you should have delayed your attacks more and also I think you used his halfcirculars too little since they're all very good moves.

SeikoKilla: You had a nice Wolf and Lei Fei but one thing I noticed is that I think you threw too little with Wolf, you actually threw more with Lei Fei. I had some very fun matches against you where it at some points turned into a setup exhibition lol. I also remember the one match where you fell out of the ring because of my awesome presence! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif
You had a good idea of when it was good to use a throw when you were attacking, but I think that if you work more on your movement so you can get in while staying offensive without having to use moves and also getting away while staying offensive as well, I think that will be a big leap for you. And also work on that ETEG since I could abuse poking you into throw way too much.

NGCrush: You beat me in the teamtourney you bastard! It was nice to see that you were writing down everything Jonas was saying and I hope you keep that as your dutch vf-bible so that the dutch level can go up more! This goes to both you and Krye, where were the SPLASH MOUNTAIN!!! throws, I'm not even sure I got splashed more than once or twice. That's like playing Wolf and not using giant swing, or playing Shun without crushing everything, or playing Eileen in a non-monkeylike fashion, in other words, it has to be done! It was fun playing though I don't like using Pai vs. heavyweights since she can't really juggle them.

Vortigar: You were using Brad's slips, sways and ducks well but I could tell that your basics were really lacking. I actually recommend that you pick up another character that doesn't have any fancy stuff with evasive properties and work on movement, fuzzy and eteg a lot since you will be forced to do that if you want to win since there won't be any other ways of doing it. That's why I started playing Pai a lot instead of Eileen because I was using crush moves too much to avoid damage instead of basic defense. What was nice was that when I ate a launcher I really had to eat a lot of damage and you used throws often as well and in the right places. Brad's delayed wakeup kick is like a frikkin projectile, it was like playing Doa4 all over again, I always thought I had outspaced it but somehow it just kept hitting me, it was insane lol!

Sp00n: We didn't get to play that much and you seemed pretty down but what I thought when I played you was that you had a good idea of how to play Aoi and I found myself getting thrown a lot, you also did throw escapes but you tried to do them reactivley when you saw me throwing on screen, that's something I also used to try and do and it doesn't pay off because even if/when you learn to react you're just putting yourself in danger of them forcing the same situation and nailing you with a counter hit launcher, take it from someone who knows. Change that to ETEG and you will have a solid defense which can go a long way! I really hope you don't quit playing, especially since you've shown that you're a player will to travel for the game.

Akebueno: We got quite a lot of games in and Shun was an asshole as usual, even more so since Pai has trouble juggling him. You used 2K a whole lot, that move is beyond words, there even was a time when it went under my lifting palm which just left me thinking "What...?". You had a bad habit though of evading into mule kick after 2K hit which I learned to capitalize on, and I feel you should have been mixing your throws up more. 2K on wakeup was a bitch to deal with since it kills so many moves that it limits what I can do while staying offensive, seemingly I could do lifting palms on it if I spaced it right and timed it right. In the end I just stopped using other moves than 9K+GK because that didn't get crushed by anything and it worked as a good whiffpunisher as well since it's so fast and has good range and relied more on outspacing rather than outguessing you and I think that worked well. You definitley have to work more on the basics, like I told Vortigar maybe playing another character more that can't "easy mode" out of danger as much is the way to go so you have both solid defense and bullshit to fall back on which becomes a much more dangerous combination than just one or the other.

Once again, good games and I hope you'll be back at some point and show us a stronger and improved dutch playerbase, and we will be as nice as to return the favour by also become better ourselves!

 

@Skatan: Sorry I didn't play with Lau most of the times we played, I was really worn out on the last day and also on the end of the first day (also on the second, but we didn't play on the second day, I think), so I wanted to go for a simple character, so I picked Jeff. I actually don't play Jeffry that often, I just stole some NGKrush tactics and spammed knee so I could have some fun!

I will play more games with Lau the next time I'm over there.

For some reason, I fucked up ETEG so much this weekend! It just came out as throws (not even failed evade-> throw) so many times, I don't know what I did wrong (probably buffer it too early).

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I uploaded some fights to youtube, links are here:

http://virtuafighter.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/245887#Post245887

I hope Ake gets around to uploading some more fights (most of the matches are on his harddisc), if not, it'll take some time for me to get those matches online.

 

Im upping videos to my youtube, but the queueing system seems to be broken so this may take a while. Heres couple that Ive managed to finish so far today:

Jeneric(Vanessa) vs Krye(Lau) 1

Jeneric(Vanessa) vs Krye (Lau) 2

note: I just cut the constant vid on from the camera into pieces roughly <10mins.

 

Argh, very annoying to see all the mistakes I made... I could have done so much better there /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif

I need to play more Vanessa's!

 

Hey Manj, guess all i am familiar with is people talking about ETEG, what are these EDTEG and ETTEG? why better or worse than standard ETEG, and why is this the first time i'm hearing them mentioned?

 

EDTEG = Evade Double Throw Escape Guard
ETTEG = Evade Triple Throw Escape Guard

My guesses

 

ETEG is enough no need to make silly acronyms like ETTTTTEG, multiple TE's are common in ETEG anyways.

Also sounds like you Swedish and Dutch folk had a good time at this gathering, had a decent turn out too /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif