Before the Burst Tournament Report

Date: 6/28/15
Formats: Zero-G, Team Plastics, HMS, Single Elimination Limited Just for Fun

Between my various travels over the summer, I was home for a collection of about 10 days, what better thing to do during them than host a super awesome Beyblade tournament? I showed up at about 11 AM with my speaker, a big thing of cookies since it also happened to be Sniper's birthday and a blader spirit ready to play. Shortly after, our main stadium guy, Stars showed up and *Ginga*, my usual tournament running assistant arrived right behind him. All in all, we had 20 different bladers competing in the collection of formats across the day. A couple of nice surprises were the family of littledude99 and Dr. Im and her friend showing up after seeing the thread without ever posting. Night wing 247, Arupaeo and his son BurnRockVirgo made their first tourney appearance in over a year and Angry Face and Wombat made the long drives from their respective homes to round out the crew on top of our usual crowd of geester99, Stars, *Ginga*, Tech, Sniper (who had actually already moved back to New York), beymaster15963, Greninja Master, lawesomeness, and myself.

We ended up doing Team Plastics first with Team ACE (Atlantic Coast Elite, Angry Face, Ginga, and myself) going undefeated in the double elimination format and Rising from the Ashes (beymaster15963, Dr. Im, and dirt2) battling their way back through the bracket into second place after losing in the first round. The big surprise here more than anything else was GODS (Stars, geetster99, and Sniper, at the time all three were ranked within the top 10) getting eliminated rather easily. Overall, the team format was enjoyed by everyone who participated and I would love to find a way to do it again in the future. I thought the scoring system worked really well and my only issue was not doing the research to know I still needed to keep track of individual matches within the team ones despite playing in plastics. The one concern I still have is that nothing since the pilot event for team format has been processed in the team rankings: http://worldbeyblade.org/Thread-Official-Teams-Ranking and I don't believe team accounts were ever created.

We then moved on to Zero-G where Arupaeo showed us that he still hadn't lost a step by only taking two losses throughout the entire swiss rounds and finals and finishing in first. He advanced along with what was a very strong group of bladers in Tech, Wombat, Sniper, and Stars. With so many highly ranked players participating in the tournament, some usua* final mainstays like geester99, *Ginga*, and myself just couldn't quite make the cut. With this being during the trial ban period of F230 + CF/GCF I found the format refreshed and felt myself willing to use something other than my B and Phantom E230 staples (admittedly, it ended up being to my own detriment). Otherwise a very typical Zero-G tournament all around. One other tidbit of previous note is Greninja Master's continued success with Death B against left-spin stamina.

With many of our participants leaving for the day, we ended up in a block round robin for our last official format of the day, HMS. With parts being rather rare and expensive, many participants only had a few at their disposal so many parts were traded back and forth. By far the most fun matches in HMS are always Phantom Fox v. Phantom Fox when all four parts actually manage to stay in the stadium. With Stars, geetster99, *Ginga*, and I having the most extensive collections we ended up moving on to the finals. In a battle of Samurai Upper Defense Ring Grip Flat Core vs. Circle Upper Defense Ring Grip Flat Core I managed to stone wall and KO *Ginga* enough times that my Samurai Upper version prevailed. geetster99 and Stars tied for first with myself taking third before one final battle. After some spin direction antics, geetster managed to take the match and first using his Jiraiya blade staller. Every time I play HMS, my disappointment that the series was cut so short only grows.

The final event of the day more for fun than anything else was a low-key single elimination limited tournament. We had eight bladers left for this so it worked out perfectly. I can't remember too much about this other than that someone who played in it introduced me to one of my current favorite combos for limited. What a day of bey it was! We rocked out to my playtime jams playlist for most of the day and collectively put away some 100 chocolate chip cookies. Events with so many highly-skilled players are always a ton of fun! Here's to more like this in the future!