my first combobreaker was this last weekend so naturally it's time for a writeup

(photo credit to akai, akaistring on twitter)

first off holy shit I see why this is the fighting game event in NA. the vibes were incredible the whole way through, gamers taking over a fancy hotel lobby and putting setups on literally every flat surface with a power outlet nearby is perfect. I loved it. 100% coming back next year. but onto the performance stuff.

tl;dr:

CASUALS TAUGHT ME MORE ABOUT MY GROWTH THAN THE BRACKET

so like, I'm really new to all this. I've been playing fighting games generally and xrd in particular for a little over a year. people have been saying "you should enter tournaments for experience but not evaluate your growth by results" basically the entire time. I'm going to be honest I knew this but I didn't feel it until this weekend, some part of me was just... suspicious of the sentiment I guess. is it the catholic upbringing or the fact that my parents only valued my achievements as a child? take your pick.

The whole bracket got recorded, so there's a lot of footage!

crimefighter does great work organizing these wherever possible, please watch this bracket

also please join me in a raised hand spirit bomb energy give so that chaos code NEXT doesn't get swallowed by exa. I desperately want it to be released overseas

The whole bracket got recorded, so there's a lot of footage!

📸: tempusrob and vexanie

Xrd

I went 3-2 overall to place 33rd, losing to Mystic in pools and $TANG in the first round of the top 48 split. I'm fairly satisfied with this performance but I also think that's a kinda boring way to feel about it, so I plan to do a lot more matchup study for both Dizzy and Baiken. I also need to get back at Rud+E for washing me in casuals, and make sure he doesn't win the next TXT set we meet in.

I was also expecting to fight Kizzer in my third round of pools but DSBro managed to knock him to loser's for the runback. He was the Potemkin I had to beat to get out of last year's pools, but he had beaten me in a few online brackets so I was a bit nervous going in. I ended up taking it 2-0 but fighting Pot never gets less scary.

Other than that, it was great seeing everyone again and getting some hotel lobby casuals. I have a few general things I want to work on now too. The week before CB, Pat recommended I be about 10% more rabid and DaveO agreed when I was talking to him later so see me mashing 5P a lot more. The second thing is just getting a lot more intentional on defense; I have a tendency to just gamble with blitz or backdash or whatever because it works out just enough, but I don't think I'm actually looking at the screen enough or rotating options intentionally enough right now. I also gotta learn to fuzzy jump >.>

GGXX

Funny enough, I also went 3-2 (one of which was a DQ) in XX to place 33rd, which is a lot better than I had been expecting considering I haven't played since April. Mostly, I'm happy I beat Cocojam because I happen to really like fighting Axl—I'm not scared of the matchup (though not for the reason people tend to think). Definitely excited to get back to the game more now, and I think it's actually time I started learning JI HCL 6FRC6 stuff a bit.

On the tech side, we ended up having some controller issues in the first round of pools but nothing unsolvable. The second pools ran smoothly as far as the PCs were concerned, but startgg went down and delayed things. Top 16 and Top 8 ran smoothly though, so I'm happy there.

An Aside

I'm pretty open about the fact that I tend to be down to hook up at majors and make out with people I've just met if there's a good vibe there, but only if there's vibes. And a good way to kill the chance of that is to tell me something about meeting me a year ago and then thinking about me since. I cannot stress enough that If we haven't kept in touch, then we don't actually know each other that well and you really gotta talk to me a while first before shooting your shot. Like, do shoot your shot if you want to, but keep in mind that I'm generally looking to chat first and foremost. I like making out with friends, and I'm always down to make new friends at majors, but please do actually make friends with me before looking to kiss or hook up. And what I'm definitely not interested in is being a part of a story in someone's head that I wasn't there for.

Closing Thoughts

It's such a cliche, but the community really is the best part of majors. I had a great time seeing out-of-town friends, making new ones, and staying up way too late for my own good. Can't wait for the next one.