The following are words I have to say about "Beyblade East 2023 Day 0: FIVE GRAMS", a ranked (?) X tournament using 3v3 format for first stage and deck format for finals.
I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17CwZmI8mUQ . It's an oldie, but we're dealing with a New Order here.
- The weather was bad. Cloudy as heck when I arrived, and the light dwindled fairly rapidly once the tournament began. We finished by virtue of phone cameras. It was HOT. It was HUMID. And once the finals began, it stormed. We were at least dry because of the giant pavilion we were in. I don't think I've been at this venue before, it's fairly good. But it wasn't ideal conditions, weatherwise. I had to drive home in the dark and rain.
- I used a cooling towel again. It didn't significantly help this time around, the humidity really isn't something it combats well. Better for dry heat.
- We had 19 participants today, making this a 5 round swiss. Everyone got to play at least 5, except for the person each round with a bye. Also another blader ended up dropping. We did have a single tiebreaker match before the finals, more on that later.
- The seeding was more or less random. Let's face it, there's no X rankings yet, so, not much chance to use those. They could've based it on Burst ranking, but didn't.
- X is very fun. There's no left spin yet, you don't NEED a flowering attack launch to do attack, you just need to have a tip that will connect with the tooth belt. There isn't much tip variety yet, just Flat Needle High Needle Tapered and Ball. There are two blades that do very well for attack, one that is just two light, two viable defense types, and a stamina. The ratchets are fairly simple at the moment, once those get going things are going to get crazy.
- There were some ground rules today. One was don't be impulsive and stick your hand in before the match is called unless you want your opponents to get 3 points. The other was burst priority beats everything, because that happens right at contact, and that even includes one bey bursting while the other exits the entry ring, which would normally be a tie.
- I ate Olive Garden before the tournament. In the early afternoon, I paid the price for that. But I was okay.
- We started around 6:20. I was sorely vexed by this! I told them sundown was 8, and we needed to hurry! It went fast, but they still started late, and we had to use flashlights to see things for a while. Eventually overhead lights turned on a little bit. We can't do late tournaments outdoors like this! We had 3 beystadiums running, and the format is very fast, so it did go quickly. The first stage 5 round swiss "ended" at 7:30. Kind of.
- I did a lot of judging today. Sometimes people were bad at hearing themselves being called to matches. Eventually I just started walking over to people and telling them directly. Not ideal. Be aware, bladers, be aware!
- With 4 points being the goal in X, Over Finishes and Xtreme Finishes are the name of the game. Being able to get two or three points at once is tremendous, and since specific attack launches are not required, it's easy to capitalize on that. There are a bunch of people who ran Wizard Arrow on Ball, and that actually works quite well. But the big scorers today were Hell Scythe and Dran Sword. Dranzer Spiral is just too light, it gets knocked around. Knight Lance and Knight Shield did fairly well, sometimes all you need to do is deflect an attack type enough to make them self-KO.
- This tournament was using 3v3 first stage. So we saw a lot of most of the existing 6 blades.
- My 3v3 lineup wasn't terrible creative, just a little. Hell Scythe 4-60T, because it's a good attack tip, a good attack height, and a good attack blade. Most of my attack successes were with this. Dran Sword 3-60F. So, stock Dran Sword. It's good. It does good attack. Stamina and survivability are Way Worse than Tapered. But I wanted two attackers, so I gave Scythe the Tapered advantage. And Knight Lance 4-80HN. Also stock! But it's a solid combo. It feels like better defense than Knight Shield, lacks the inherent imbalance, and giving it a high ratchet and tip seems like a stamina improvement. It deflected a lot of attacks successfully. Not all.
- There are way fewer self-KOs now. I see the occasional self-Xtreme, but that's rare. The pockets are less inherently self-launchable. This is an improvement.
- I did exceptionally well in the first stage, even though I went 3-2. Every single one of my opponents was exceptionally good, due to the more or less random seeding. My first opponent was Aege, who to my surprise was actually Allen. I managed to make my attack beys work well. My second round opponent was Yami. He was borrowing parts, but I once again had great fortune with my attack launches. At this point I KNOW the barriers to entry for attack are just gone, because Yami normally wrecks me at attack. Third match against LJ-Blader, I defeated him too! Three wins right out of the gate is usually a recipe for making it to the finals, and my eventual 10.0 buchholz agrees with that. In round 4, things got more difficult, as I wasn't the only one having great success with attack, The Supreme One was as well. She defeated me! And so did BearsFTW25 in round 5, but he's always been great with attack. 3-2 and 10 buchholz, that's nothing to sneeze at.
- We only had 1 blader go 5-0 and 2 bladers go 4-1. Yet somehow we didn't get to 2-3 records until 11th place. I was in a clear 4th place, but we had three people tied for 7th with 3-2 and 7 Buchholz, and only two spots for them. Which meant we had to do a round robin between Kirito1696, Walkure, and swaglakitu. How did that go? I didn't get to see it!
- We were so pressed for time and light, and it began storming when round 1 finished. We knew the top 6 bladers, so we could actually start the finals bracket with the seed 4-5 match and the seed 3-6 match while that round robin to determine who would go to the finals was going on.
- I did no judging in the finals; I was too busy participating in the finals.
- In the finals, we used deck format, going to 7 points. A very different kind of game! I decided to swap out my Dran Sword for Wizard Arrow 3-80B. I figured it'd be pretty good, and I hadn't been running stamina all day. It is, in fact, rather good, and TSO and Bears had successful runs with it, although I think they were using 4-80.
- My first finals opponent was Angry Face. We had some bursts, we had some mid-air contact redos, and we both tended towards using Dran Sword and Hell Scythe on attack. I got the better of him this time around, although it was close. I believe the final score was 9-5.
- My second finals opponent was TSO. She used Wizard Arrow to some good effect, but really it was her KOing my beys in Xtreme finishes that led to her success. Well done!
- The 3rd place fight was me against BearsFTW25. He too used Wizard Arrow! And it was close, and I gambled that my Knight Lance would block his Dran Sword, but he Over finished me anyway! Well fought and accomplished!
- The tournament completed at 8:04. It was dark and it was rainy. LJ-Blader got 1st place! TSO 2nd place! BearsFTW25, 3rd place. And I got 4th. Not bad for my first X tournament!
- I don't remember if there were prizes, everyone was in kind of a hurry to pack up and go.
- I want more X tournaments. They are so good. So fun. I'm looking forward to Low Flat and Shark Edge, those are going to be nuts. We could have three viable attack types.
- I know you all want to follow TT's rules as closely as possible this time around, but you have to accept at some point the things they do are going to be wrong or ill thought out. Attack is way too strong in this, anyone can do it very easily, and KOs can be worth 2-3 points. It's worth considering lowering Over to 1 and Xtreme to 2. Attack will probably still overwhelmingly Win. Also, a bey being knocked out via the entry ring counting as a zero point redo instead of a 2 point KO is still an absurdity.
- This was the first of 5 Beyblade East 2023 tournaments! 4 more remain! Tomorrow is metal day, and I'm running one!
X is a lot of fun. I want to play more of it. But instead I'm going to do 4 more non-X tournaments this weekend?!?!
I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17CwZmI8mUQ . It's an oldie, but we're dealing with a New Order here.
- The weather was bad. Cloudy as heck when I arrived, and the light dwindled fairly rapidly once the tournament began. We finished by virtue of phone cameras. It was HOT. It was HUMID. And once the finals began, it stormed. We were at least dry because of the giant pavilion we were in. I don't think I've been at this venue before, it's fairly good. But it wasn't ideal conditions, weatherwise. I had to drive home in the dark and rain.
- I used a cooling towel again. It didn't significantly help this time around, the humidity really isn't something it combats well. Better for dry heat.
- We had 19 participants today, making this a 5 round swiss. Everyone got to play at least 5, except for the person each round with a bye. Also another blader ended up dropping. We did have a single tiebreaker match before the finals, more on that later.
- The seeding was more or less random. Let's face it, there's no X rankings yet, so, not much chance to use those. They could've based it on Burst ranking, but didn't.
- X is very fun. There's no left spin yet, you don't NEED a flowering attack launch to do attack, you just need to have a tip that will connect with the tooth belt. There isn't much tip variety yet, just Flat Needle High Needle Tapered and Ball. There are two blades that do very well for attack, one that is just two light, two viable defense types, and a stamina. The ratchets are fairly simple at the moment, once those get going things are going to get crazy.
- There were some ground rules today. One was don't be impulsive and stick your hand in before the match is called unless you want your opponents to get 3 points. The other was burst priority beats everything, because that happens right at contact, and that even includes one bey bursting while the other exits the entry ring, which would normally be a tie.
- I ate Olive Garden before the tournament. In the early afternoon, I paid the price for that. But I was okay.
- We started around 6:20. I was sorely vexed by this! I told them sundown was 8, and we needed to hurry! It went fast, but they still started late, and we had to use flashlights to see things for a while. Eventually overhead lights turned on a little bit. We can't do late tournaments outdoors like this! We had 3 beystadiums running, and the format is very fast, so it did go quickly. The first stage 5 round swiss "ended" at 7:30. Kind of.
- I did a lot of judging today. Sometimes people were bad at hearing themselves being called to matches. Eventually I just started walking over to people and telling them directly. Not ideal. Be aware, bladers, be aware!
- With 4 points being the goal in X, Over Finishes and Xtreme Finishes are the name of the game. Being able to get two or three points at once is tremendous, and since specific attack launches are not required, it's easy to capitalize on that. There are a bunch of people who ran Wizard Arrow on Ball, and that actually works quite well. But the big scorers today were Hell Scythe and Dran Sword. Dranzer Spiral is just too light, it gets knocked around. Knight Lance and Knight Shield did fairly well, sometimes all you need to do is deflect an attack type enough to make them self-KO.
- This tournament was using 3v3 first stage. So we saw a lot of most of the existing 6 blades.
- My 3v3 lineup wasn't terrible creative, just a little. Hell Scythe 4-60T, because it's a good attack tip, a good attack height, and a good attack blade. Most of my attack successes were with this. Dran Sword 3-60F. So, stock Dran Sword. It's good. It does good attack. Stamina and survivability are Way Worse than Tapered. But I wanted two attackers, so I gave Scythe the Tapered advantage. And Knight Lance 4-80HN. Also stock! But it's a solid combo. It feels like better defense than Knight Shield, lacks the inherent imbalance, and giving it a high ratchet and tip seems like a stamina improvement. It deflected a lot of attacks successfully. Not all.
- There are way fewer self-KOs now. I see the occasional self-Xtreme, but that's rare. The pockets are less inherently self-launchable. This is an improvement.
- I did exceptionally well in the first stage, even though I went 3-2. Every single one of my opponents was exceptionally good, due to the more or less random seeding. My first opponent was Aege, who to my surprise was actually Allen. I managed to make my attack beys work well. My second round opponent was Yami. He was borrowing parts, but I once again had great fortune with my attack launches. At this point I KNOW the barriers to entry for attack are just gone, because Yami normally wrecks me at attack. Third match against LJ-Blader, I defeated him too! Three wins right out of the gate is usually a recipe for making it to the finals, and my eventual 10.0 buchholz agrees with that. In round 4, things got more difficult, as I wasn't the only one having great success with attack, The Supreme One was as well. She defeated me! And so did BearsFTW25 in round 5, but he's always been great with attack. 3-2 and 10 buchholz, that's nothing to sneeze at.
- We only had 1 blader go 5-0 and 2 bladers go 4-1. Yet somehow we didn't get to 2-3 records until 11th place. I was in a clear 4th place, but we had three people tied for 7th with 3-2 and 7 Buchholz, and only two spots for them. Which meant we had to do a round robin between Kirito1696, Walkure, and swaglakitu. How did that go? I didn't get to see it!
- We were so pressed for time and light, and it began storming when round 1 finished. We knew the top 6 bladers, so we could actually start the finals bracket with the seed 4-5 match and the seed 3-6 match while that round robin to determine who would go to the finals was going on.
- I did no judging in the finals; I was too busy participating in the finals.
- In the finals, we used deck format, going to 7 points. A very different kind of game! I decided to swap out my Dran Sword for Wizard Arrow 3-80B. I figured it'd be pretty good, and I hadn't been running stamina all day. It is, in fact, rather good, and TSO and Bears had successful runs with it, although I think they were using 4-80.
- My first finals opponent was Angry Face. We had some bursts, we had some mid-air contact redos, and we both tended towards using Dran Sword and Hell Scythe on attack. I got the better of him this time around, although it was close. I believe the final score was 9-5.
- My second finals opponent was TSO. She used Wizard Arrow to some good effect, but really it was her KOing my beys in Xtreme finishes that led to her success. Well done!
- The 3rd place fight was me against BearsFTW25. He too used Wizard Arrow! And it was close, and I gambled that my Knight Lance would block his Dran Sword, but he Over finished me anyway! Well fought and accomplished!
- The tournament completed at 8:04. It was dark and it was rainy. LJ-Blader got 1st place! TSO 2nd place! BearsFTW25, 3rd place. And I got 4th. Not bad for my first X tournament!
- I don't remember if there were prizes, everyone was in kind of a hurry to pack up and go.
- I want more X tournaments. They are so good. So fun. I'm looking forward to Low Flat and Shark Edge, those are going to be nuts. We could have three viable attack types.
- I know you all want to follow TT's rules as closely as possible this time around, but you have to accept at some point the things they do are going to be wrong or ill thought out. Attack is way too strong in this, anyone can do it very easily, and KOs can be worth 2-3 points. It's worth considering lowering Over to 1 and Xtreme to 2. Attack will probably still overwhelmingly Win. Also, a bey being knocked out via the entry ring counting as a zero point redo instead of a 2 point KO is still an absurdity.
- This was the first of 5 Beyblade East 2023 tournaments! 4 more remain! Tomorrow is metal day, and I'm running one!
X is a lot of fun. I want to play more of it. But instead I'm going to do 4 more non-X tournaments this weekend?!?!
