Daisy

4-4 at the final Rev2sday of 2023 tonight. fun variety of matches tonight:

• played @pattheflip as first match of the night and lost 2-0 but fun to play again after the last set. also funny for me personally because i usually hit the first queue of every night thinking "i wonder if i'll match with pat at this moment where every player is at equal footing" -- but then I started a bit late tonight and got Pat first try without even worrying about it. funny universe.

• fellow Millia player TeddyTreebark who regularly does top 8 at events and has been a nice supporter/cheerleader in stream chat. Another 2-0 but I gotta make sure to take notes from it, Teddy had some tricky mixes. TBH tho, I think Teddy's biggest strength comes from his very practiced Secret Garden pressure¹, and I managed to mostly avoid getting trapped in that by some good-feel blocking on late disc to keep the setplay at a slightly less dangerous level. Teddy's frequent top 8 placements have meant that I've watched a lot of his pressure and so I felt pretty good about the kinds of second-layers he would attempt. I'm pretty happy about the amount of 6K blocking I managed, even tho he still got a couple to connect. I took a round in each game! Just not two in the same set; no points for that trick, eh

• by chance, I matched up against Gracidia ahead of our FT3 match at R3SSHOUMANIA - this Saturday, December 2 on twitch.tv/pattheflip. I won 2-1 tonight! I wouldn't call it an easy victory! I've been playing vs a few other Baikens lately for practice, but Gear is the kind of game where there's enough choice for players to handle situations differently - Gracidia's decisions after a blocked Kabari were different from the other folks I've been playing and it made for new things to consider. Good data ahead of Saturday? Honestly I'm feeling like I probably should use the time between now and then to chill, but we'll see how much I commit to resting bc it's fun to practice stuff sometimes

I thought I was gonna have some stray thoughts to tack on the end of this but I spent so long writing the matches that it's all gone now! Okay! I'm going to bed, good night!

1. Teddy's second biggest strength because it's on my mind and I wanna say it: he can connect a stray j.P into a full 7- or 8- hit air combo knockdown with pin really consistently. I think it's neat! j.P mashing and routing up into j.K dj.KS pin on impulse is something I really wanna practice