The following are words I have to say about "Boring Tournament", a ranked 1v1 Burst Standard tournament that I ran..
I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY3IKJeiJb4 . Look, I play a lot of good videogames, don't judge me.
- The weather was Rain. It was raining Before the tournament, it was raining During the tournament, and it actually stopped raining After the tournament. It was a nice cool 70ish degrees, but it was very wet outside. Thankfully the pavilion mostly kept out the rain.
- We had about 38 people pre-register in total, and actually had 27 show up. Which was surprising to me. I had about 5 people cancel due to rain, but 27 bladers still showed up. I guess they decided to brave the treachery of rain! At least there was no flooding or lightning at the tournament area. With 27 people, that means 5 round swiss, with 1 bye per round. Not ideal, but, that's life!
- We were not alone in the park! An 8 person family was already in the pavilion by the time I got there at 10:40. They had set up a bunch of rugs and blankets on the ground between the two picnic tables we normally use for tournament beystadiums, and were having a picnic on the concrete, right where we normally set up the third and/or fourth beystadiums. So, that took some adjustments. I had to comandeer the picnic table with the bad tilt, and one of the picnic tables they were sitting next to and not using, as tournament tables. And we had to set the floor beystadium up in a different spot. It was an adjustment, but you have to remain flexible with this sort of thing. I find that a lot of my professional life boils down to working around problems other people cause. I guess the same applies to my hobbies!
- I named the tournament Boring Tournament. Why did I do this? Dunno. I just felt like doing a tournament, we'd had a bit of a gap in them, and I wanted, for once, to do 1v1 burst standard again. We spent so many years just doing 1v1, and by the time 3v3 and P3C1 become both common and official, we were all sick to death of 1v1. Honestly though, going back to this format after so long... it was fun. I kind of missed it. Matches were way quicker than P3C1, 3v3, or 5v5. Which was good for us, because this tournament ended up being so far from boring.
- One thing I did was get on the announcement megaphone a lot and adopt a really deadpan, boring voice. I hope people found it entertaining. I took inspiration from an SNL character (Herb Welch) but without the character's problematic behavior. It was fun. I hope you enjoyed it.
- We got started around 12:15 PM. People kept showing up at the last minute so I kept delaying the bracket set up until I was absolutely sure no one else was showing up. Once you start swiss format, that's it.
- Challonge has my IP blocked at home? That makes writing a tournament report Difficult! Everyone else can see the brackets except me.
- Because this was 1v1 ranked Burst Standard and only a few bladers were really new by any stretch of the imagination, we saw an awful lot of Vanish and Dynamite on Bearing'. A lot. I mean, everything else wasn't safe. That's what I mostly ran. There were a couple of exceptions. Some of the newer bladers were running attack drivers, and they actually succeeded very well! It was kind of amazing! As usual, BearsFTW25 showed up using nothing but attack combos, and I would love to be able to check how he did except Challonge has blocked my IP apparently. Good to see some attack success in this format!
- I had an okay run, I went 3-2. I lost a match to Kota, father of shota. He's good, so, no complaints here. And reaching round 5 with a 3-1 record, it put me up against CrisisCrusher07. At this point, my abysmal record against him is legendary; I cannot defeat him. I agonized over what to use. I can't beat him on same spin launch strengh, his Bearing combos tend to beat my Drift, and I guesses correctly that he would go Vanish on left. Unfortunately I hedged my bets too much and faced him with Chain Belial2 on Bearing. He beat me 3-1. It wasn't a total rout! Just mostly a rout. What can I say, I got wacky and wanted to try different things. I shoulda gone Dynamite Bearing, or even Guilty Quick'.
- When it came time to figure out the top 8 for the finals... we ran into a fun little oddity! We had 1 person go 5-0, another 3 go 4-1, and then had a whole bunch of people go 3-2. I mean, a lot. There were two people with 3-2 who had buchholz of 10 and 9, so they got into the finals, myself included. And then... we had a 6 way tie of bladers with 3-2 records and 8 buchholz. 6 bladers, for two spots. And the rules for a 5+ tie is round robin. Oh. Oh no. That's... that's 15 matches.
- We started the 6 blader tiebreaker round robin at 2:05 PM. The matches went relatively quickly. I entered one of them in wrong at first, mistaking which match had occured, so I ran the match I errored immediately and put in the correct result afterwards.
- One of the best matches I witnessed today was SandwichBred self-KOing twice (he was really having a time with his guilty xtreme), and then managing to turn things around and win 3-2. Stunning. He and his friend GuppyNate managed to be the top 2 bladers in the 6 person tiebreaker round robin.
- Oh crud, I am going to have some trouble entering these matches in the spreadsheet if I can't see Challonge. What the heck did I do!
- We started the finals at 2:45. 2 bladers were new to it, but the rules were explained to them. By the time of finals my throat hurt really badly from all the talking and I had to get some water, so I couldn't explain it to them myself.
- Bladers, please be patient when I'm entering names into brackets. I know you want to get started on matches, but I Really need to make sure I enter all the right names! It takes time, and I had to do it Three Times Today! Please, patience. If we start matches early, it can throw off the timing of matches, especially in Round Robin.
- For my first finals match, I was up against @"Allen Shaffer". I have an okay record against him, but today I erred. He was able to more or less shut me out entirely with Dynamite on Bearing'. My Dynamite Drift wasn't going to do it, my Vanish Bearing' wasn't doing it, and although I picked Astral for the "Let's try to defeat same spin dynamite bearing combo" I had set up, it was Astral Kerbeus on Bearing, which Did Not Work. Turns out the correct answer was probably High Xtend+', but hey, I don't make good or rational decisions? I named a tournament Boring Tournament, after all.
- There were some interesting matches in the finals. One of the side effects of the new spinning rules is that if a Prominence gets completely clobbered and is only spinning VERY FAINTLY, but it continues to spin in its right direction without fully stopping, then it can continue to pick up spin from left (Roar in this case) and continue being in play even though it may be functionally dead at several points. A real zombie bey situation, we had a lot of disagreements over whether or not it had stopped at several points midway. To me it was kind of moot since Roar eked out a little bit more movement at the end, but I had trouble getting this across when I was asked to help review. LJ-Blader, do you still have the video of that match? Please upload it somewhere, people ought to see it, I think they're going to have Opinions but we should let people see what we're dealing with.
- In 4th place, Allen Schaffer. In 3rd, CrisisCrusher07. In 2nd, The Supreme One. And in 1st place, JCMakeEmBurst!
- Bladers, we all need to be a little more mindful as far as fair play and being good sports goes. If you feel that another blader you are in a match against is giving you unwanted advice, attempting to influence your bey choosing strategies, or just annoying you, then you need to take it up directly, calmly, and verbally with the judge immediately. If the judge is not receptive to your direct concerns and you don't think they're listening to you, take it to the organizer right away, even if they're busy in one of their own matches. Ideally, do this before the match; do not worry about holding up the game, get your concerns resolved Immediately. I had to scour the rules kind of carefully to determine what exact infractions were being done if any, and talk to a lot of people. Ultimately I decided that I couldn't really prove it and decided not to issue infractions, but the responsibility for this incident belongs to me, the organizer. I need to ensure everyone plays by the rules. Collectively, we all need to be aware that everyone communicates differently and even though intentions may be good or benign, we all need to be careful. But if we have concerns at a tournament, we need to express them immediately, and not with anger.
- We didn't get to ruin another birthday party, but we got to ruin a picnic. That's good enough for me! No actually, we tried to be polite and give them their space.
- I'm really lamenting the lack of a good and effective right spin attack layer. I don't know about the rest of you, but I personally view Savior and Ultimate as ineffective. I can hold off both of those with Drift and Bearing much of the time. I'm really looking forward to Xiphoid and I hope it's a right spin attack layer on the level of Judgement. I'm sure TT will disappoint me yet again.
A fun tournament. I'm exhausted, and I have two more of these tomorrow, and Challonge IP-banned me??? Oof.
I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY3IKJeiJb4 . Look, I play a lot of good videogames, don't judge me.
- The weather was Rain. It was raining Before the tournament, it was raining During the tournament, and it actually stopped raining After the tournament. It was a nice cool 70ish degrees, but it was very wet outside. Thankfully the pavilion mostly kept out the rain.
- We had about 38 people pre-register in total, and actually had 27 show up. Which was surprising to me. I had about 5 people cancel due to rain, but 27 bladers still showed up. I guess they decided to brave the treachery of rain! At least there was no flooding or lightning at the tournament area. With 27 people, that means 5 round swiss, with 1 bye per round. Not ideal, but, that's life!
- We were not alone in the park! An 8 person family was already in the pavilion by the time I got there at 10:40. They had set up a bunch of rugs and blankets on the ground between the two picnic tables we normally use for tournament beystadiums, and were having a picnic on the concrete, right where we normally set up the third and/or fourth beystadiums. So, that took some adjustments. I had to comandeer the picnic table with the bad tilt, and one of the picnic tables they were sitting next to and not using, as tournament tables. And we had to set the floor beystadium up in a different spot. It was an adjustment, but you have to remain flexible with this sort of thing. I find that a lot of my professional life boils down to working around problems other people cause. I guess the same applies to my hobbies!
- I named the tournament Boring Tournament. Why did I do this? Dunno. I just felt like doing a tournament, we'd had a bit of a gap in them, and I wanted, for once, to do 1v1 burst standard again. We spent so many years just doing 1v1, and by the time 3v3 and P3C1 become both common and official, we were all sick to death of 1v1. Honestly though, going back to this format after so long... it was fun. I kind of missed it. Matches were way quicker than P3C1, 3v3, or 5v5. Which was good for us, because this tournament ended up being so far from boring.
- One thing I did was get on the announcement megaphone a lot and adopt a really deadpan, boring voice. I hope people found it entertaining. I took inspiration from an SNL character (Herb Welch) but without the character's problematic behavior. It was fun. I hope you enjoyed it.
- We got started around 12:15 PM. People kept showing up at the last minute so I kept delaying the bracket set up until I was absolutely sure no one else was showing up. Once you start swiss format, that's it.
- Challonge has my IP blocked at home? That makes writing a tournament report Difficult! Everyone else can see the brackets except me.
- Because this was 1v1 ranked Burst Standard and only a few bladers were really new by any stretch of the imagination, we saw an awful lot of Vanish and Dynamite on Bearing'. A lot. I mean, everything else wasn't safe. That's what I mostly ran. There were a couple of exceptions. Some of the newer bladers were running attack drivers, and they actually succeeded very well! It was kind of amazing! As usual, BearsFTW25 showed up using nothing but attack combos, and I would love to be able to check how he did except Challonge has blocked my IP apparently. Good to see some attack success in this format!
- I had an okay run, I went 3-2. I lost a match to Kota, father of shota. He's good, so, no complaints here. And reaching round 5 with a 3-1 record, it put me up against CrisisCrusher07. At this point, my abysmal record against him is legendary; I cannot defeat him. I agonized over what to use. I can't beat him on same spin launch strengh, his Bearing combos tend to beat my Drift, and I guesses correctly that he would go Vanish on left. Unfortunately I hedged my bets too much and faced him with Chain Belial2 on Bearing. He beat me 3-1. It wasn't a total rout! Just mostly a rout. What can I say, I got wacky and wanted to try different things. I shoulda gone Dynamite Bearing, or even Guilty Quick'.
- When it came time to figure out the top 8 for the finals... we ran into a fun little oddity! We had 1 person go 5-0, another 3 go 4-1, and then had a whole bunch of people go 3-2. I mean, a lot. There were two people with 3-2 who had buchholz of 10 and 9, so they got into the finals, myself included. And then... we had a 6 way tie of bladers with 3-2 records and 8 buchholz. 6 bladers, for two spots. And the rules for a 5+ tie is round robin. Oh. Oh no. That's... that's 15 matches.
- We started the 6 blader tiebreaker round robin at 2:05 PM. The matches went relatively quickly. I entered one of them in wrong at first, mistaking which match had occured, so I ran the match I errored immediately and put in the correct result afterwards.
- One of the best matches I witnessed today was SandwichBred self-KOing twice (he was really having a time with his guilty xtreme), and then managing to turn things around and win 3-2. Stunning. He and his friend GuppyNate managed to be the top 2 bladers in the 6 person tiebreaker round robin.
- Oh crud, I am going to have some trouble entering these matches in the spreadsheet if I can't see Challonge. What the heck did I do!
- We started the finals at 2:45. 2 bladers were new to it, but the rules were explained to them. By the time of finals my throat hurt really badly from all the talking and I had to get some water, so I couldn't explain it to them myself.
- Bladers, please be patient when I'm entering names into brackets. I know you want to get started on matches, but I Really need to make sure I enter all the right names! It takes time, and I had to do it Three Times Today! Please, patience. If we start matches early, it can throw off the timing of matches, especially in Round Robin.
- For my first finals match, I was up against @"Allen Shaffer". I have an okay record against him, but today I erred. He was able to more or less shut me out entirely with Dynamite on Bearing'. My Dynamite Drift wasn't going to do it, my Vanish Bearing' wasn't doing it, and although I picked Astral for the "Let's try to defeat same spin dynamite bearing combo" I had set up, it was Astral Kerbeus on Bearing, which Did Not Work. Turns out the correct answer was probably High Xtend+', but hey, I don't make good or rational decisions? I named a tournament Boring Tournament, after all.
- There were some interesting matches in the finals. One of the side effects of the new spinning rules is that if a Prominence gets completely clobbered and is only spinning VERY FAINTLY, but it continues to spin in its right direction without fully stopping, then it can continue to pick up spin from left (Roar in this case) and continue being in play even though it may be functionally dead at several points. A real zombie bey situation, we had a lot of disagreements over whether or not it had stopped at several points midway. To me it was kind of moot since Roar eked out a little bit more movement at the end, but I had trouble getting this across when I was asked to help review. LJ-Blader, do you still have the video of that match? Please upload it somewhere, people ought to see it, I think they're going to have Opinions but we should let people see what we're dealing with.
- In 4th place, Allen Schaffer. In 3rd, CrisisCrusher07. In 2nd, The Supreme One. And in 1st place, JCMakeEmBurst!
- Bladers, we all need to be a little more mindful as far as fair play and being good sports goes. If you feel that another blader you are in a match against is giving you unwanted advice, attempting to influence your bey choosing strategies, or just annoying you, then you need to take it up directly, calmly, and verbally with the judge immediately. If the judge is not receptive to your direct concerns and you don't think they're listening to you, take it to the organizer right away, even if they're busy in one of their own matches. Ideally, do this before the match; do not worry about holding up the game, get your concerns resolved Immediately. I had to scour the rules kind of carefully to determine what exact infractions were being done if any, and talk to a lot of people. Ultimately I decided that I couldn't really prove it and decided not to issue infractions, but the responsibility for this incident belongs to me, the organizer. I need to ensure everyone plays by the rules. Collectively, we all need to be aware that everyone communicates differently and even though intentions may be good or benign, we all need to be careful. But if we have concerns at a tournament, we need to express them immediately, and not with anger.
- We didn't get to ruin another birthday party, but we got to ruin a picnic. That's good enough for me! No actually, we tried to be polite and give them their space.
- I'm really lamenting the lack of a good and effective right spin attack layer. I don't know about the rest of you, but I personally view Savior and Ultimate as ineffective. I can hold off both of those with Drift and Bearing much of the time. I'm really looking forward to Xiphoid and I hope it's a right spin attack layer on the level of Judgement. I'm sure TT will disappoint me yet again.
A fun tournament. I'm exhausted, and I have two more of these tomorrow, and Challonge IP-banned me??? Oof.
