Northwest VF (Pacific NW, North America)

Throwdown Tuesdays @ Best Bout this week was pretty awesome.

We have a potential newcomer to the Portland VF scene in Andi, a Soul Calibur player who plans on coming to more Best Bout events!

This week's Throwdown Tuesday was filled with serious play on the following games: VF5 Final Showdown (of course), AE 2012, UMVC3, SxT (well, maybe it wasn't serious, but screaming fun was had), MK9, and some serious Smash Bros. (forgive my ignorance, I wasn't sure if it was Melee or Brawl).

On the VF front, we had a super competitive group with a very good level of play. We also altered the rotation format (well, put in place a rotation format because we haven't been doing that). So instead of the usual play till you move on that we've had, and instead of the usual best 2/3 matches or 3/5 matches, or even the arcade style single match... we decided to rotate with First-to-Fives.

I have to say, I love playing First-to-Five rotation. In a First-to-Five, the players get a good amount of VF, even in the worst case scenario for them. The matchup evolves over the 5-9 matches that occur so players can grow and really try to do something. It allows people to try things early and tighten up later. Furthermore, I think it allows people in the queue to have good conversation and observe the dominant player and discuss what they're going to do in their game, etc... This might be my favorite way to conduct casual play, to be honest. 5-9 matches can be a long time though, but it can also be pretty quick. In any case, I'm a big fan of the First-to-Five rotation and I'd like to hear what other people really think about it.

In discussing players this week, I'll only speak in pretty broad terms. I won't go into too many details out of respect for a tournament being on Saturday. I think I'll be able to describe how each player is playing without putting out a guidebook on how to fight them. Any other week, I'd probably get more into detail on techniques and tactics.

The Final Showdown session started off with Yangsing unleashing his Kage on both myself and AJS and winning both series 5-4. It was very good stuff and it just pumped AJS and myself up even more that we lost at the get-go. He also unleashed his ruthless Taka on R_Panda's Brad. I really like Yangsing's Taka, looking forward to more of that. Yangsing, while playing a lot of different games, put up an awesome VF showing with his Kage, Taka, and Shun. He's going to be one of the guys to watch out for this weekend at Best Bout Beatdown. I've always considered Yangsing to be both a genius reverse-engineer artist (figuring very good stuff out from videos and playing), and a strategic player because he comes in with really good gameplans against his opponents. That said, I will say that on Tuesday, he also showed he can bring on the real mindgames and I only expect this to get better and better. I've felt in the past he's only had to flip the strategy switch to adjust, but on Tuesday night he was tested on his mindgames and he proved himself.

AJS keeps improving his Jacky. Personally, I'm so glad he's committed to Jacky and is working on him. His game gets sharper each week, his ability to punish was a liability but it's now improving and I can't say it's a liability at all anymore (unless you say anything less than 100% is a liability--he probably would). He's also getting better at hit-checking and his Jacky can really control the space and pace of the fight. It's just gotten so vicious and has become one of my favorite rivals anywhere. Keep it up AJS. Combo consistency is steadily rising, but even when AJS drops the hard max damage combos, he's still doing crazy damage and he makes you think a lot about what you are doing. Also, he's mixing up his throws well depending on the opponent. Great stuff.

R_Panda is a guy I put a lot of faith in because he brings a lot of unique skills to the pool of serious Virtua Fighter players, and he's a serious VF player! I believe in the long-term his pressure game will improve. It's there, it's very strong, and Panda is now playing above intermediate level VF. People do need to watch out for him. That said, his strength is the discipline he is exercising now in trying to figure out how opponents are playing each character and finding the true answers to situations. If he can maintain this discipline, despite some hits to his results in the short term, I think he'll end up being one of the toughest guys you fight because as he evolves, he'll be the one almost never making mistakes and punishing you for every little thing you do and he'll eventually be able to double-down when you do--turning your mindgame against you. This is what I see in R_Panda's future. He has the reflexes and input control to eventually become the super technically correct and safe player. And I know that in his nature too, he will eventually build an aggressive game too. That said, Panda played great on Tuesday--he was absorbing all the different things AJS does with his Jacky, Yangsing does with his Taka, and I do with Lion. While I can generally crack him at some point, it's really really freaking hard after awhile and it'll keep getting harder week to week. Don't underestimate Panda's potential, I believe he wants to get there bad enough he's going to fulfill it and I am enjoying watching his game grow every single week.

Mackinzie isn't able to play the game at home these days, but he's training old-school-like, like how many of us had to train at the arcades. And honestly, he's doing a damn fine job. At first, his basics weren't there, but after a few matches with Andrew his basics came back and he was playing much better VF. He is playing Lau and I'm glad he's still playing Lau, Lau is actually a fun character imo but easily misunderstood. I could not resist playing Lau mirror matches against Mackinzie and I am glad for it. I will say, my Lion improved a bit because I played some Lau. Just started adding certain system elements to my Lion game that I think is pretty important for Lau. We'll see how that goes. Keep it up Mackinzie, you're playing great!

As for my game... The things I'm down on myself about is that I'm not punishing nearly enough. I make up for this deficit, but it's a liability and I need to make sure I am punishing things. There are elements I am adding to my game though, that I think will make my Lion game even stronger, but I don't think I'll be able to put them in place before Saturday. My okizeme does need to improve. It's not that bad, but it's still not completely used to Final Showdown so I need to put the hours in to make my Okizeme strong like I felt it was in previous games. I'm still irritated with my bad habits, but they got better on Tuesday, I managed myself better on Tuesday than on some other days this week. I do feel that I can play some oppressive mindgames and that at some point, I can sometimes feel when my reading is getting spot on and I can go aggressive. I definitely feel I hit this state with every player on Tuesday night, but it took awhile. That said, I am very happy with how I played Tuesday overall, but I came out with a very productive and good laundry list of things to work on. So I'll be working on it!

Anyways, amazing night on Tuesday. Sorry I can't go into nitty-gritty details, but I will be writing about that stuff later maybe. Hopefully next week!

I'm looking forward to Best Bout Beatdown! I hope more Seattle VF players will show up, because I think we have a really healthy Northwest VF scene! And for me personally, there's a list of people in mind that I think could win the VF tourney this Saturday, and the list does not only include Oregon players. I know there's a lot of local pride on the line, but I'd personally be most proud of a damn strong regional scene for VF--and I believe we already have it. I just want to see some awesome VF matches this weekend (and be a part of some) and prove that we have A LOT OF GOODS in Northwest VF!

-Chanchai

P.S. It's too bad AJS cannot make it to Best Bout Beatdown this weekend, he's definitely one of the people on my list that I think could win it all. He'll be on vacation with family though, and so I'm wishing him and his family the best time! It's also too bad Femto cannot make it, it would truly be awesome to have him in the tournament as well, and he's also on that list. That said, there are other Washington players on that list

 

Having a NW room yesterday, watching the GC footage from last week, and thinking about tomorrow's tourney has me pretty damn pumped!


Need to look at the my work schedule for next month and see if I can get the July SRB off.


I NEED DAT OFFLINE VF!

 

I'm pumped with you, Femto!

Just love how much heart you bring to the table up there ^_^

It's too bad I'll miss the early part of the tournament (scheduled childbirth classes) but I usually make it home in time for the grand finals and then I get to watch the archive.

But keep it up, it should be exciting at Dante's tomorrow! Looking forward to seeing what everyone brings!

Also curious what kind of okizeme you're doing with Blaze. Just seeing so much fun okizeme stuff from him online hehe. Especially Uwamawari (setting up back-turned positions for opponent) type stuff ^_^

 

Hey everyone, FS youngin' here who lives in Seattle.

I'm still suuuuper green at this game (it's really the first fighter I'm trying to properly learn,) but I'm enthusiastic and ready to put in the work. I currently play El Blaze but I'm still undecided on who I want to primarily play, I also like the looks of Jeffry, Jean, Vanessa and Brad, but I'm booty with all the above so it doesn't matter much.

I'm in that annoying phase of job searching where I'm spending time waiting to get that call back, so I've got plenty of free time right now to play. Like I said, I'm really quite poor at this game, but I at least can be another body/entrant to add to a tournament or what not.

My xbl tag is AFGroove, feel free to add me.

 

If you decided to stick with this game I can help you out with Jeffry if you choose him, let me know.

 

Welcome to Northwest VF! There are actually a lot of players willing to play with, train with, and work on VF with you ^_^

Great to see you posting here too!

 

Don't worry about watching, since there most likely won't be a stream, because apparently Dante's has really bad internet. However some of the matches will be recorded and posted up later.

Oki is a lot of fun with El Blaze, but you have to be careful not to overdo it and use it accordingly. He does have a ton of options though.

 

Good luck to everyone going to Dante's tonight! Looks like it should be a great one tonight!

A reminder to all the Seattle-area players, Dante's is hosting this week's Thursday Night Fights (run by Game Clucks). There will be both a tournament and casual matches--so whether you're there to win it all, or you're there to just enjoy good VF with others, you really should go!

Support the best VF Experience you can get in your area!

Here's a copy and paste from the event posting:

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">When: 5:00pm Today (Thursday June 21st, 2012)
Where: Dante's Seattle
5300 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, Washington 98105-3629

Venue Fee: $5 for casuals and/or tournament
Entry Fee: $10 ea. for AE, UMvC3; $5 ea. for KoF, SFxT, VF5

Schedule: Registration goes until 15m before the start time of each event.
5:00pm: Doors open, casuals begin
7:30pm: VF5 and UMvC3starts
8:00pm: KOF XIII starts
8:30pm: SFxT and AE 2012 starts

Marvel will be Best 3 out of 5 format

Prizes:
12 or less in Bracket pays top 2: 75%, 25%
13+ in Bracket pays top 3: 70%, 20%, 10%

UNDER 21 PLAYERS: Unfortunately at 9pm (+/- 30ish mins), you have to be out of the venue.
</div></div>

 

That roster is not up to date.

 

A few years ago, VFDC imposed a time limit on editing (unless you're an admin/moderator).

So I can't update that original thread, but it's good to see old names return and well, old names we hope will return (personally, I hope Ratgoat will return to VF, I really enjoyed fighting him!).

 

Thanks for the offer, Jeffry is looking like my dude for now, so any tips for him or the game in general would be greatly appreciated. Actually as of writing this we're in the same xbl lobby. Small world.

 

From what I've seen, Kamais' Jeffry is a beast! We had a really laggy match when we played (I blame the connection on my side) but I really enjoyed watching him play others.

We do need more Jeffry players, so I'm glad you're giving Jeffry a shot!

 

We will do some players so I can assess you. In that room, I showed you my troll side which made one of the guys pull the plug and indefinitely shut off his 360. Chanchai wouldn't approve... ^_^

 

lol, probably not

 

This is why I can't wait for you to grab the PS3 version

 

So I just spent a good 30 minutes getting swatted around by Kamais. But no pain, no gain.

I'm really excited to start learning how to properly play this game, so if anyone in Seattle is looking for someone to play with offline or online hit me up. I'm basically brand new to VF, but I'm ready and willing to learn

 

So in terms of learning the game itself I'll let chanchai and your fellow offline seattle players (which there is a lot of) to handle that front.

In terms of Jeffry specifics, I recommend reading over the Jeffry dojo section threads, especially that of Sebo's posts.

Since you're brand new with Jeffry it's hard for me to say what you should be doing since you're just starting to get used to him. I will say this though, you use a lot of P with Jeffry I noticed and that needs to stop. It's punishable and Jeffry has better moves at his dispose, it's something that should be used rarely to catch an opponent off guard. You use a lot which also should be used sparingly because it can't be hit-checked and it's punishable (taka's version on the other-hand is god-like ^_^).

That's all for now, I'll do assessment #2 after you've played some offline sessions and/or learned the game.

 

Yeah, I noticed I was doing that too, I didn't mean to, but I still have my new player hyperactivity where I hit buttons first and think later. I remember in one of the "how-to" VF5FS videos that have been cropping up the player recommended hitting guard after punch to make sure your string is cleared but like I said when I feel pressured my hands just start acting on their own.

Just gotta keep up playing, reading and learning.

 

Thanks, Kamais! While I'm not GrooveA, I really appreciate this! And I know myself and others in the scene will try to do our part to help him with the general stuff ^_^

 

NORTHWEST VF WEEK IN REVIEW: 6/17 - 6/23

This was an exciting week in Virtua Fighter in the Northwest. Offline and Online sessions were happening on both the private and public level, we still see a few more players enter the scene in Oregon and Washington (and I also assume in BC), and two notable tournaments happened this week.

Sessions (Offline)
The public offline sessions continue in both Portland and Seattle.

(Portland, OR) Throwdown Tuesday @ Best Bout Gaming this week was a serious training session for some of the top Portland VF Players. AJS (Jacky), Yangsing (Kage, Taka, Shun), R_Panda (Brad), and myself (Lion) had seriously heated training battles on First-to-Five Rotation and it was some of the most competitive matches all 4 of us have had in a public casual session. Mackinzie joined in and leveled up his Lau game a bit later in the evening and also showed that he is not to be ignored!

(Seattle, WA) Game Clucks Thursdays @ Dante's had Virtua Fighter in the casual and tournaments variety. The tournament will be written about later in this post. The casuals were pretty good and opened up a lot of connections for some of the players including a newcomer in A-Groove!

(Portland, OR) X-Factor Fridays @ Best Bout Gaming continued the serious VF training, even though it was one day before Best Bout Beatdown 13! I wasn't there, sadly because of work, but through the grapevine I heard I missed an excellent training session that featured the likes of Portland's own Fatbear (Akira), R_Panda (Brad), Yangsing (Kage, Taka, Shun), Mackinzie (Lau), and more!

All of the above notes are about public sessions. The VF Scene in the Northwest is really bonding and a lot of private sessions (Portland, Seattle, and both) occurred over the past week. Again, an excellent week of VF for the Northwest!

Sessions (Online)

* Some online sessions were setup among Seattle and Portland players, particularly on XBL, but a couple on PSN as well. Keep it up, guys! (Just don't forget that offline is still better, but online is great).

* I showed up for a bit on AU_IAM_DIGIMON's Twitch Stream but unfortunately my connection wasn't very good. That said, I like the enthusiasm this guy is having! This is a pretty fun stream ^_^

* MasaRED (Redmond, WA player) made an impressive showing with his Shun (along with Gl0ry 35's Taka) on SoCal VF's The Late Show on Friday night! BTW, I recommend checking this out every Friday night, you're likely to see some VFDC people on there and a lot of great online Final Showdown action!

Tournaments

(Seattle, WA) Game Clucks Thursdays @ Dante's was a dramatic tournament with a rivalry established between Duncan and Femto. Femto won the previous two tournaments, but in the second tournament he had to climb out of the loser's bracket after Duncan put him there and get revenge and then some against Duncan in the Grand Finals. THIS WEEK the opposite happened as Duncan was the one to climb out of the Loser's Bracket to eventually take down King Femto and crown himself the week's Seattle Champion. Afro-Cole is not to be overlooked, despite 3 Third Place results for all of the tournaments. Afro-Cole continues to train hard and he even went to Portland and leveled up his VF game in the process while netting more results! Next week is going to be hype to see a hungry Femto fight back, to watch the growth of a potential new star in Duncan, and to see if Street Fighter Legend Afro-Cole can take the crown in Seattle (I am personally letting everyone know that Cole is loving Final Showdown and he's only going to keep getting better and better)! Congratulations to Dustin for earning this week's victory!

And since this is the first Northwest VF Weekly Report - Congratulations to Femto on his tournament victories in the two previous tournaments and his second place finish this past week!

***CORRECTION*** Congratulations to Zass for winning the first Game Clucks Final Showdown Tournament! I sincerely apologize, I actually watched the match (and commentated on the stream chat) but somehow I failed to re-read the brackets today!

Game Clucks Thursdays @ Dante's Full Results
1. Duncan
2. Femto
3. Cole
4. Beasley
5. Anton
5. The Show
7. Sorias
7. Daniel

Bracket
Video Playlist

(Portland, OR) Best Bout Beatdown 13 @ Best Bout Gaming was the first Portland tournament for Final Showdown and things went wonderful despite some intended players not being able to make it. I will first list some of those who intended to go but could not for various reasons:

* AJS - The change of date for the event prevented AJS from making it. But others will get to see AJS soon enough, he's clearly one of Portland's top Virtua Fighters with a very precise Jacky!

* Duncan - I was excited at the chance to fight Duncan as I have had my eye on him since Northwest Majors. Duncan quickly became a huge force in the Northwest King of Fighters scene and he is picking up Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown at an insanely fast rate with no real prior VF experience. While he seems publicly quiet in VF, he is one of my top prospects for the Northwest VF scene and I think he can get to national level in a relatively fast period of time, but no pressure! I am saying this on very limited information, but I can personally say that this guy is grasping VF probably faster than I have ever seen anyone grasp the game before. I was really looking forward to fighting him at BBB13, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared at all of him. We will see how he grows ^_^ Duncan could not make it because of prior commitments, but he was really willing to come down to Portland from Seattle for BBB13.

* Sorias - Professional matters kept Sorias from coming to Portland for BBB13. Sorias has been one of the prominent Northwest Aoi players and I'm glad he's playing quite a bit of Final Showdown!

Now that I've mentioned some of the people who planned to go but could not, the story of Afro-Cole's travel to Portland is pretty entertaining. At the last moment, Cole's ride disappeared, but Cole had given his word he was coming to Portland. He spent the whole night looking for a ride to Portland, but various circumstances made the search fruitless. And then Cole did something I totally did not expect and had me all o.0--Cole said screw it, he rented a car and offered rides to other Seattle players that were left ride-less for Portland! Color me impressed, happy (I promised Cole that when he comes down to Portland, we would have good VF times!), and wow'd that he followed through on his word in that fashion!

Best Bout Beatdown also saw the return of Hollis who is a VF Sarah veteran from VF4(b) at Portland's Lloyd Center Tilt days. Welcome back, Hollis! And good fighting, you had tough opponents but you really put in some great fights! I'm looking forward to more sparring sessions with you.

Anyways, back to the Best Bout Beatdown 13 (I think I'm allowed to hype it up this month because this tournament happens only once a month or two months ).

Best Bout Beatdown 13's Final Showdown Tournament had its share of exciting moments and nervous tension! This was the first Final Showdown tournament in Portland and nerves started a bit strong, but it added to the excitement of the fights.

The tournament started on an entertaining fight: Salem's own Slash almost won his fight against Seattle's Russel. It began as Slash's Eileen fought the onslaught of Russel's Jean, but Jean came out winning that matchup. Slash brought out his surprise character, Lei Fei, and won the second game. Russel's Jean was able to manage through a very intense third game.

Fatbear (Akira) vs. Afro-Cole (Akira) was also an exciting match that was way too close for comfort. With the Akira being too close for comfort, Cole brought out his Goh and put on a commanding performance against Fatbear's Akira which seemed to struggle really hard, but really did put up a fight towards the end, but it was too late as Afro-Cole sealed up the match.

Perhaps the greatest tension of the tournament were the meetings between Yangsing and Afro-Cole. Afro-Cole's Goh put Yangsing on edge and exposed Yangsing's lack of knowledge against Goh. The two fought hard to learn the opponent's characters (Cole had to try to figure out Yangsing's Taka, Kage, and Shun) and the matches were very close, especially in the Loser's Bracket Finals rematch between the two which got insanely close before Cole barely took it to knock Yangsing into Third Place.

Regarding my matches with Cole, I have to admit that I was incredibly nervous fighting against his Goh at the start of the Winner's Bracket Finals. I have some experience against Goh, but not a lot. I was also fighting a lot of nerves in this tournament and I have a lot of respect for Afro-Cole's game. As part of those tournament nerves, I was rushing inputs awkwardly, so I dropped some combos here and there and also used the wrong combos on the wrong characters. I maintained my cool thought, and I was able to take advantage of Cole's cautiousness fighting me--I guess one can say that I benefited greatly from the top seed position, because Cole was hesitating for awhile and I think it was because of a lot of respect for me, but he also knew he had time to try to figure me out--so I used as much of that time as I could to try to deal with him swiftly. I also felt more comfortable when he switched to Akira (I have admitted this to him already), and so I felt like I could be more aggressive, I think the videos will show that. After watching his matches with Yangsing, I did feel more comfortable with his matchups and with where I was playing relative to him for the tournament (each day is a different day, on this day, I felt pretty good at this point). While not playing the perfect game at all (I never expect to in a tournament, however, and having less excuses makes it easier to move forward), I felt much more focused in the Grand Finals and then it felt like it was my day.

Having said all this, I admit that while I did fear Cole, my biggest fear in the tournament was Yangsing. Next time he's in a tournament, others should watch him, Yangsing is one of the top VF players in Portland and I will go on record as saying in the Northwest too. He's gaining more experience, but he also absorbs things quickly and he can execute very well and figure out good lines of play pretty quickly usually. If he is able to to figure out some effective ways of fighting you or he sees the holes in your game, he'll attack those holes and it'll be hard to fight off the tools he will use on you. Don't underestimate Yangsing. He is also a seasoned tournament player, and tournament experience can never be counted out (this is why I also never underestimate Cole, even at Northwest Majors where there was a clear knowledge gap at the time between us), you must always factor tournament experience in. In casuals, Yangsing and I are pretty much 50/50 with a margin of +/- 2 matches. We go back and forth a lot and rarely does a differential go beyond 2 matches. If I seem more threatening to more players than Yangsing, then I just attribute it to me being a bit more aggressive in my general play, combined with my VF experience and so my good habits cover a lot of bad habits and allow me to cruise a bit more against most people than Yangsing, who gets the killing engine going once he works out the matchup between his character and yours and where the holes in your game are. But once Yangsing smells blood, he is damn dangerous against anyone.

Best Bout Beatdown 13 was a fantastic event, and I am excited for Best Bout Beatdown 14. I expect Seattle to come down with a full force and both Portland and Seattle to really battle it out. I also hope that BC players will be able to get into the mix too, because I think the Northwest VF scene (online and offline) is damn exciting right now!

Best Bout Beatdown 13 Results (9 Entrants)
1. Chanchai (Lion)
2. Afro-Cole (Goh, Akira)
3. Yangsing (Taka, Shun, Kage)
4. R_Panda (Brad)
5. Fatbear (Akira)
5. Hellsap (Taka)
7. Hollis (Sarah)
7. Russel (Jean)
9. Slash (Eileen, Lei Fei)
BBB13 VF5FS Top 4 - around 4:58:00

WRAPUP
So, exciting times for Northwest Virtua Fighter! I have not forgotten British Columbia or Idaho. If there are any VF players in other parts of the Northwest region, please reach out to us!

Evo is happening soon, but I feel this is just the beginning. I have full confidence that this scene already has so much talent and that we have what it takes eventually challenge the rest of the country--but it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of passion. And I'm already seeing the work and the passion so let's keep it up!