Apr-10-2022: "Unburstable Patches" and "Sol's Out Launcher's Out" reports

The following are words I have to say about "Unburstable Patches", a Burst Classic 3v3 tournament, and "Sol's Out Launcher's Out", a Metal Fight Limited 3v3 tournament.

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Common to both tournaments:
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- The weather was about as bad as it could be for a doubleheader tournament. It rained briefly, and from then on it got sunnier. It was windy the entire time. It was cold the entire time. I didn't wear my heavy winter gear because it was supposed to be 52. This was a terrible mistake that I made. And the wind, oh gods, the wind. The wind was NOT GOOD. Wind is basically the enemy of any Beyblade tournament. It made things difficult. Stadiums and mats and other materials got blown around all day. It was exhausting. I frequently broke down crying. You would think that April would be prime season to start playing Beyblade again. You would be wrong.

- Time was not a factor for this two-tournament day because we started at noon, and we started the second at around 3. We were done at 7. We were not in danger of losing daylight. But, we had to face some difficulties from our decisions. The first tournament was scheduled to start at noon and the second at 4:00, but we started it at 3:00. This turned out to be a decision we would pay for. But the tournament had 10 participants, and the second had 13. These should have been fast round robin tournaments, with a little bit of time added because they were 3v3. We started the MFL tournament way earlier, around 3, even though we had people registered who hadn't shown up yet (we figured they were not going to show up). but we had two registrants who weren't there. We didn't expect that they would actually show up, started without them, and ran into the problem of what happens when you go from 11 to 12 people in Round Robin.

- The Supreme One was considering running the tournament on the basketball court instead of under the pavilion. I talked her out of it for the first stage of Classic, but at the finals of Classic and during the second tournament we switched to using the basketball court. This led to some interesting ramifications later. Although we had a bit more sun, we were more in the wind. Once people showed up to play basketball, we kept having errant basketballs roll by and into the tournament, combined with shadows of basketballs distracting us later on. Some of the basketball players decided to bring a boom box, turn up the volume, and play explicit lyrics. Not ideal? Not appropriate for a public park? Ah well.

- The basketball court was decidedly uncomfortable. Instead of standing up at perfectly good stationary picnic tables, we ended up sitting on pads or folding chairs. Everything hurts now. The wind and cold compounded with legitimate physical pain. I discourage us from using the basketball courts again, the meager amount of sunlight did nothing to offset the wind and cold.

- I should be resting, at home, in a warm house, while the world melts down around me. I'm so cold. And it's not even just the physical damage this time, it's the mental exhaustion.

- I didn't have to lend out any parts, almost everyone who showed up had appropriate parts, or couldn't be added at that time.

- Round Robin really takes the guesswork out of who goes to the finals. It's two from each group, and you rarely get any sort of significant tie, and they always have match history. However, as we discovered, Round Robin can mean signing yourself up for a near endless series of matches, and adding players to round robin can be easy before you hit the 12 and 17 player thresholds, and should NEVER BE DONE after those.

- Nobody left either tournament early. Cool.

- We had about 25/22 registrants for both tournaments, and only a fraction of those people showed up. But the no-show rules are not enforced.

- We had players show up after the start of both tournaments. In the Classic tournament, we started on time, and 2-3 bladers showed up late and without appropriate parts. In this situation we opted not to add them, since it's a bit of a nightmare to do so and also they didn't have parts anyway. They were invited to enjoy free play outside the tournament matches.

- In MFL, we started an hour early, but THREE BLADERS showed up after the time we began, but before the official scheduled start of the tournament. One of those players let us know he was arriving at 3:50, so he was added to the brackets in advance; removing a no-show costs us nothing in Round Robin. But a further two, who had registered well in advance and we figured they were just going to no-show like so many others, arrived before 4. At that point, we had 11 bladers. Once you hit 12 you're supposed to go to 2 Group Round Robin instead of 1 Group Round Robin, but by then we had already done A LOT of matches. We could not in good conscience turn them away from the tournament for an issue that we caused by starting early. They were added to the single round robin goup... and we had a 13 person group for round robin. That's 78 matches for 3v3 MFL. That's too many. We realize processing this might present problems and this does not align with the exact rules. We regret nothing, we COULD NOT turn them away, and could not effectively break it into a 2 Group Round Robin at that point.

- We are never starting a tournament early ever again for the above reasons. This will never be allowed to happen again. No one should EVER start a tournament early if 100% of the pre-registrants have not arrived or actively indicated their absence.

- I never want to play Round Robin again if I can avoid it. Go to hell, Round Robin. I miss Swiss.

- Oh God I'm still so cold will I ever be warm again

- I would say I judged about a third of the matches. TSO and I were the primary judges, but we quickly had combinations of other experienced players step in and judge. There were just too many judge involved matches, we had to.

- Today was a learning experience. I learned not to attend or hold any doubleheader tournaments earlier than May, or later than September. It's just not a good idea, weather-wise. I learned to stay the heck away from the basketball courts, I am in a lot of pain. I learned that Round Robin is trescherous and should not be trusted as a format, Swiss is ideal. I learned that starting a tournament early will create problems.

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"Unburstable Patches"
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- We had a 10 person 1 group round robin tournament. We had at least 4 beystadiums set up but we only ran 2. It was 3v3, and we ended up moving to the basketball courts. I think this ran about 3 hours.

- I have some difficulties with Burst Classic, I tend to do iffy in tournaments. But I think the format is fine. There's no decisive system of "Here are the stamina layers that always win, here are the attack layers, and here are the only tips you use". There's a LOT of tips that work. There's a LOT of layers that work. And there's not too many legal and good discs. You tend to see and get a lot of variety. There were plenty of bursts. I saw plenty of KOs. And stamina too, plenty of that. Classic might be one of the better formats available, given how broken every other Burst format is.

- More than just the inherent fairness in the format because of the restrictive layers and discs, the quality of bladers in the Central Atlantic region has raised to an extreme degree over the past 4 years. We had 8 returning bladers who were all extremely capable and have made it to finals frequently, and two brand new bladers who had very good 3v3 deck setups. You have to go all the way to rank 9 out of 10 to find anyone with lower than a 4-5 record. The two who scored below that both had reasonably made decks, and had some great matches, but a tournament is a zero sum game and those losses have to wind up going somewhere. They should not feel bad about how they did, everyone was an exceptionally prepared and qualified blader here. Dang, Central Atlantic region, you should be proud.

- I went 4-5 in the first round. Those losses have to go somewhere, and I had 5 of em! Very few of those losses were shutouts, they were fights.

- My deck today consisted of Orpheus O2 Heavy Eternal-S (my Absorb-S is stuck in Slingshock mode, it drops down, so I effectively have to give up on using it), Yegdrion Knuckle Survive-S, and a couple rotating combinations. I think for 3-4 of the matches I was bringing Acid Anubis Gravity Bearing'. It didn't Burst, but it didn't win. I eventually swapped in Yell and High Defense, and then started rotating the layers a little bit until I settled on Neptune.

- There was a fair amount of attack even in first stage, where burts and KOs are worth 1 point instead of 2 in deck (with contact).

- One of the most common combinations I saw today was Chaos Heavy High Xtend+'. Someone spilled the beans on that in a thread, and I would say at least half the bladers there were using it. Not me, I don't have Chaos. But I did eventually come up with a layer capable of beating it, Neptune Yell High Defense. Too little too late!

- Quaddrive Assault/Kick was present on a lot of Anubion A2 combos. I was thinking of using it myself, I have it, but I got talked out of it. I should've, it would've been great. At least 4-5 people were using it and it did extremely well. There's a lot of interesting Quaddrive combos. We determined that it actually requires disassembly to mode change it, so it was ruled as one of the once-per-match disassembly mode changes. This definitely affected at least some of the matches TSO was in.

- Orpheus O2 is a bit of rarity nowadays. I use it, bladekid uses it, and even in certain situations TSO uses it. It's still quite good.

- Hasbro was all over this tournament. I would say 60% or more of the layers and tips were Hasbro. Hasbro really shines in this format.

- I didn't make it to the finals! That's okay. The 4 person finals consisted of The Supreme One, Broyeeto, bladekid, and RED NINJA 0829. There were some exceptionally tricky battles and turnaround victories, which I don't remember so well after the second tournament. I believe Broyeeto got first, TSO second, and I forget who was 3rd/4th.

I don't regret how I did, I think next time I'll make some different decisions in first stage. Orpheus O2 and Yegdrion still hold up well in classic, despite it all. Bearing' is Bearing Trash in same spin against a lot of combinations.

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"Sol's Out Launcher's Out"
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- We had a 13 person 1 group round robin tournament, for reasons previously explained. We had 2 BB-10 beystadiums for it, and 2 B-09s were added later. No one who was against the use of the B-09s was forced to play in it. But, you know, 78 matches in first stage to get through, so, compromises had to be made. Not an ideal situation all around but we made the best of it. We could not and would not turn away those two bladers who did everything right and registered ahead of time and showed up before the scheduled start time. Difficulties and exact rules be damned, we are people of integrity and We Regret Nothing.

- The official bracket only has 11 bladers in it; there were 13. We kept track of their matches separately, and added them all together before the finals. TSO will make a version with all 13 bladers and all the matches.

- I have sort of a lackluster track record at MFB. In previous Pick 1 tournaments, I usually wind up being in the top 4 out of 8 or 9, getting a marginal 50% or so record, and get completely steamrolled in the finals.

- I went 6-6 in the first round. A good record, but about 2 spots below the top 4. I actually have some really good parts for MFB formats, and do very well in Standard (won one of those last year) and Zero-G, less so in Limited. Why am I not as good at limited? I think it's my launch strength! I don't have a really good strong launcher. When I try to launch right spin, it feels weak. It really cost me a lot of wins today. I ended up using (for every one of my matches) Gravity Perseus (in left) B:D, Meteo L-Drago F230GCF, and Duo Ice Titan (Hasbro) 230MB. I did VERY well in left spin most of the time, and for some reason Duo didn't work well for me. It's my launch strength I think.

- Or maybe it's the fact that more or less EVERYONE was using Flame Something 230CS. Coated Sharp. I don't get it! It's like Unite, isn't it? Why is everyone using this and more to the point WHY IS IT WORKING? It works SO WELL. WHAT THE HECK! Anyway, even after 12 matches of that I was stubborn and didn't use it. I should've.

- I know I made a big deal about the high quality of bladers in the Central Atlantic region in the Classic tournament. This one was even better. EVERYBODY, to include 3 complete new players, had exceptional 3v3 deck setups. This was just good Beyblade all around. I don't have the complete standings right now, I'm missing @"Nathan M" and aiger7 but they did very well. You might look at some of the people who did less good at the tournament and think they didn't do a good job. No, wrong, they did a great job, it's just that everybody else ALSO did an incredibly great job and the losses have to go somewhere. Easily some of the best Beyblading I've ever seen, in two tournaments, in a single day.

- Gravity was NOT allowed to change direction in first stage. I still used it. It's still quite good even without spin direction change. One of the better lefts out there.

- I didn't make it to the finals! That's okay. TSO had to add up the extra two blader matches with the other standings in the bracket. The 4 person finals consisted of The Supreme One, Broyeeto, bladekid, and RED NINJA 0829. AGAIN. The same 4 people. There were some exceptionally tricky battles and turnaround victories. TSO had a devastating semi-finals loss where a 4-2 lead was lost, and the final two points were due to self-KOs. The test launches were just fine, but the self-KOs, well, it happens with attack types. Still kind of downer. The 3rd place match was going extremely unwell for TSO against, I forget, was it bladekid or RED NINJA? The score was 1-4. And suddenly there were a LARGE number of KOs. There were KOs that both bladers wanted to call a tie. I wasn't convinced. I checked the footage, and TSO's Gravity definitely knocked out the other bey reasonably significantly before self-yeeting. A 5-4 upset.

- I forget the last match, it was a good one though. Broyeeto won... again. He won both tournaments. He 3d printed trophies for the first place winner for both tournaments, and 
ended up taking them both home himself. What! Madness. Or, you know, he's just really good?

- 2022/04/11 EDIT: We had a lot of part breakages during MFL. MFL equipment was not built to last. TSO got a part of a M2F stuck in a layer. Also broke a prong on a left spin launcher. iCrazyEater was trying to height change a CH120 spin track and I think it got broken. We all have to be very careful with our stuff, and prepare to replace it I suppose, if possible. I'm starting to think my Long Sparking Right Launcher is wearing down too.

There were difficulties but it was a good tournament.

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I have probably forgotten a great many things. I am lucky to remember as much as I have already.

The ONLY thing stopping me from delaying the tournament I'm scheduled to run on this coming Saturday is the fact that I have already purchased 3 engraved trophies with that exact date on them. I'm never going to put dates on trophies ever again. Never put dates on trophies.

When I got home, I went directly to bed for 2 hours. Then I went to type this. Now I'm going back to bed. Will I be able to fulfil any of my responsibilities tomorrow? Probably not.
Another great in depth write up, Crab. Some notes:

"- Or maybe it's the fact that more or less EVERYONE was using Flame Something 230CS. Coated Sharp. I don't get it! It's like Unite, isn't it? Why is everyone using this and more to the point WHY IS IT WORKING? It works SO WELL. WHAT THE HECK! Anyway, even after 12 matches of that I was stubborn and didn't use it. I should've."

Just an explainer, Flame 230 is so tall it actually benefits more from tips that keep it upright, and are also tall to emphasize it. CS does both, resisting destabilisation better. Doesn't do a lot of defensive work tho given most things are hitting it upward. Flame 230CS is very good in the right metagame but can be very risky in others.

On that note, I heard about the combos used, it's nice to see the rubber flat tips MFL was intended to favour see good use in one of our most significant scenes!

Super proud of my boy Broyeeto for hitting it out of the park today. The guy is unreal, great launch and a really good sense for playing to his opponent. Super impressive.

As for the Chaos Thing, making threads is what we used to do, so I don't know if I'd call it spilling beans... Just documenting and sharing knowledge. It was once a big focus but has fallen off a bit. Someone was hoping to try to inspire some of that activity again. Someone is very glad to see people working out counters for it, thinking and getting creative. Someone finds A2.G.Zn'+Z(H) and A2.Y.R-SPM quite effective, with tight Roktavor combos being interesting too.

It sounds like an amazing day out regardless of the weather. Everyone I spoke to had a great time. Shout out to TSO for continuing to host absolute banger tournaments.
This tournament was really fun! I definately had a blast playing MFB for the first time. I didn't win enough matches to get into top cut overall going 5-7. However, only around 2 matches were clean sweeps. Most of my matches ended with a score of 3-2 in favor of my opponents and I see that as an absolute win. It just means that I need to practice with MFB more and I should be able to start seeing some top placings. Good report as always DeceasedCrab.
This report will be from a players perspective and not the overall event.
Unburstable Patches: this was chaos. No, I mean that literally, chaos was everywhere. This combo is near unstoppable although we have found one regular counter yesterday. A2 assault+kick (using kick attachment) seems to take it down. Even so, chaos wins near every other stamina matchup, even being able to take down stationary burst attack with ease. (It loses to ko attack hard though). I used this combo first stage and I believe it lost two rounds? One was against a v2 on x’, pretty expected but the other was vs a driger s which I messed up my launch against.
Ended up going with 1 loss from redninja in first stage. In deck, I didn’t use chaos because I knew the people I was going to be fighting were going with hasbro kick on A2. I instead opted for my old reliable driger s heavy orbit and it seemed to be the correct call. I ended up winning both matches of finals with my v2 knuckle quick’ which was definitely my MVP for this format.

Sol’s out, Launcher’s out
Metal fight limited, always a good time. Started with 4 loses in a row I believe (ouch!). Took some time getting back used to the bb10. Once I got used to the bb10 I had my lightning L drago on r2f and Pegasus ch120 rf to fall back to. (Meteo 105 W2D was also commonly used). Now, after I think my fourth loss (not sure when I did this) I noticed that my Pegasus wasn’t launching quite right (due to I assume being a PHW, this is my only phw so I can’t confirm that) . I then swapped to my experimental Fang gil ch120 RF (fang as in the hasbro fang that is hollowed out). I really, really enjoyed using this thing. Didn’t have trouble on the launcher once. This combo went undefeated, it tied once in a double ko with gravity 105 WD in finals. I’m hoping to have a thread out on this soon because I believe it is one of the best right spin attack types in the format. Anywho back on track to the tournament! Ended up going 8-4 making it into finals by the skin of my teeth (friedpasta was right behind me with 7-5). First finals match was vs bladekid and my meteo was able to take most of the victories. He then swapped his gravity to left and took down my meteo. I swapped to hasfang (what I will be calling the hasbro fang wheel from now on) which took down that and got the final point. Close one! Now, in grands I was vs redninja. I had fought him earlier because, as stated in crabs post, everyone fought everyone. I remembered he used a low track gravity combo on r2f. Now flame, although very easy to ko with a 130 track or above is very good against low track attack. He only had one answer to this being earth something SR200 TB. I got the first point of this match and that’s basically what decided it. I’d stick with flame and he’d go earth and then after he won that he would go with gravity. I would use flame to take down gravity and meteo for earth (his third combo, bakushin on metal flat, didn’t get used). It just came down to who could get their matchup. Final match was between earth and meteo. Meteo was able to pull off the outspin one final time for a close finals match.
Fun times were had. Can’t wait till next time!
Sheesh, that’s wild
I have edited in a bit about MFL part breakages, we had A lot of those. Unhappy
First part of the day is up on my YouTube Channel!