If anyone else has reports for this tournament, here's the thread for it.
Another fun tournament today!
I did not confuse High and Low mode this time. Also, most beys capable of it are running in Low Mode. There are a lot of advantages there. Which is funny considering that low and high spin tracks had so many possibilities in Metal Fight. But in burst, the high mode isn't high enough, and leaves a gap, and low mode can destabilize most everything before DB.
I didn't judge except for one or two matches, they had plenty of judges on 3 stadiums, and once again there were a ton of Vanish and Dynamite layers around. A couple Roars. We're really seeing the DB stuff take center stage. A lot of these layers are absolutely shutting down the stuff in previous generations.
I actually made it to the finals this time, first time in a while. Back in 2019 I had a string of tournaments where I made it to 2nd place each time, to the point where I developed a complex about wanting to get any place except 2nd. Thankfully, those days are mostly over! With the amount of seriously good bladers in Maryland, I no longer need to worry about getting second place anymore. It's not gonna happen, I'm not gonna be able to get that far again for quite some time. A lot of this is due to my old standby of Perfect Phoenix being mostly obsolete now, since Superking. Also my Xtend+ is on the fritz for real. But yeah, nice to be able to make it to finals again.
During the first stage, I only ran a single bey. It won't appear in the Winning Combinations, but I will tell you all honestly: It was Roar Fafnir Giga Zone'+Z-2. Low mode Roar Fafnir is funny. In Allen's words (or was it Crisis'?) it manages to put some stopping potential on Dynamite. The amount of close calls against Dynamite my Roar had today, real squeaker wins against Dynamite, was a lot. The loss I had against Ardmore Bladers, I lost 2-3, it was VERY close. This bey is one to watch: It counters a lot of Dynamite combos, unless the opponent is particularly skilled, and counters a lot of Everything Else, especially Rage combos, depending. I know Zone'+Z is hard to get, but I think you might actually have similar or even better results with plain ol Bearing. I elected not to test that today; I was afraid.
It still seems like at least 80% of the attendees had at least one viable combo from the current meta. The accessibility of TT gap is gradually going away, at least in Maryland, and there are a lot of really good bladers in the region.
During the quarter finals, I got paired against TSO. You know how that goes! She's one of the more skilled bladers out there and it shows. It's not so much that she has all of the latest parts, she mostly does; it's that she understands the right parts and tactics for any given situation, makes good decks, and is willing to revisit old parts (even from GT) that still have a lot of potential. Both she and Ardmore ended up using Hybrid in the finals! Hybrid turned off! Weird, but it works! I, on the other hand, do not always make good decks for deck format; today for example, I made a bad deck, or a Not As Good deck. I have occasionally defeated TSO in first stage and the finals in tournaments before, and today was not one of those days. Because she's a better blader. I will freely admit there's a skill gap here: for the most part, TSO is just better than me. I have to have some incredible luck and skill whenever I battle TSO in order to win.
Let's talk about sportsmanship. Bladers, talk to your parents about being good sports. If your parents make a loud spectacle of complaining about the fact that you did not win, and claim it was unfair that you had to play them at all, that's bad sportsmanship. Those sportsmanship rules extend to your parents. If they're not going to be good eggs about the competition, maybe they should stay home. It is especially egregious to complain "Well they only won because they're a professional with all the best parts" when the blader they are a parent of happens to have most of the best parts. You know what really causes one blader to win over another blader most of the time? Skill. Practice. Experience. Sometimes you just have to accept that you are not always going to win it all. That's life. That's Beyblade. I don't think any of the organizers or judges noticed that particular outburst, they were pre-occupied with other things at the time. But I noticed. And if it happens again, well, we can discuss whether or not it should count as a tournament violation. Bladers, make sure your parents behave themselves, or you are the ones who will suffer a penalty!
We had a blader show up with some fake parts. Unfortunately, all their parts were fake. We spotted it before the tournament, and organizers got them something they could use legally in the tournament.
Someone left early, again. Different person this time. At the start of tournaments going forward, we need to tell everyone the rules about leaving. If you're sad because you went 0-3, that's fine, but if you're going to leave, at least tell the organizer. Don't just bail without letting someone know. Just because you can't make it to the finals doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Every match is an opportunity for more practice and experience. And hey, if you bail on a tournament mid-way through without telling the organizers, and you register for another tournament? The organizers are going to talk to you about that, because we don't want a repeat of bailing without notice.
We did have some questions come up during the tournament which I think are going to need more clearly laid out rulings going forward in tournament play. And they are as follows:
1. Can you do a single mode change from a Low DB layer into a high DB layer during a match? I would honestly vote no on this one, Gatinko layers specifically have rules against disassembly on that line during a match, and I guess they never updated for Sparking core modes (pulling out a free spin core mode for a fixed core mode on 2B for example) and for DB layers (low to high or high to low). The way it was ruled during this tournament, a single low to high or vice versa disassembly was allowed once per match, for each blader. It's interesting to note that some matches that are very close on Low vs. Low are much less close on High vs. High.
2. This is an odd one: We had a right spin layer using Hybrid. The Hybrid switch was set to left spin. During a launch, Hybrid accidentally turned itself on (THIS RARELY HAPPENS) and because the spin was the opposite direction to the hybrid spin switch, it very quickly lost all its stamina. Are you allowed to, as a mode change, disassemble the bey, turn the L switch to R, and turn off the bey. This came up during the final match! Personally, I would rule that disassembly for the R/L switch probably not allowed, but it looks like in the rules there's a note that accidental mode changes like wings coming out are supposed to be reset each round, and I figure this would apply to Hybrid tip turning itself on. So let's get a ruling on that!
I had a lot of fun at this tournament, but I think the current direction of the meta is stagnation. The amount of opposite spin matches we have to record is Ridiculous. Judging those is RIDICULOUS. I am still investigating using other first round formats designed to thwart the ties problem. I really want to pursue that so that tournaments don't bog down looking at phones and slo-mo recordings to judge ties. I would rather have to inspect 6 or 10 beyblades before every single match rather than having to slo-mo record over and over and over. Also right spin attack is currently dead, and it is making a defensive stamina meta king once again. The Tyranny of Perfect Phoenix is back, now in Dynamite Drift form.
Another fun tournament today!
I did not confuse High and Low mode this time. Also, most beys capable of it are running in Low Mode. There are a lot of advantages there. Which is funny considering that low and high spin tracks had so many possibilities in Metal Fight. But in burst, the high mode isn't high enough, and leaves a gap, and low mode can destabilize most everything before DB.
I didn't judge except for one or two matches, they had plenty of judges on 3 stadiums, and once again there were a ton of Vanish and Dynamite layers around. A couple Roars. We're really seeing the DB stuff take center stage. A lot of these layers are absolutely shutting down the stuff in previous generations.
I actually made it to the finals this time, first time in a while. Back in 2019 I had a string of tournaments where I made it to 2nd place each time, to the point where I developed a complex about wanting to get any place except 2nd. Thankfully, those days are mostly over! With the amount of seriously good bladers in Maryland, I no longer need to worry about getting second place anymore. It's not gonna happen, I'm not gonna be able to get that far again for quite some time. A lot of this is due to my old standby of Perfect Phoenix being mostly obsolete now, since Superking. Also my Xtend+ is on the fritz for real. But yeah, nice to be able to make it to finals again.
During the first stage, I only ran a single bey. It won't appear in the Winning Combinations, but I will tell you all honestly: It was Roar Fafnir Giga Zone'+Z-2. Low mode Roar Fafnir is funny. In Allen's words (or was it Crisis'?) it manages to put some stopping potential on Dynamite. The amount of close calls against Dynamite my Roar had today, real squeaker wins against Dynamite, was a lot. The loss I had against Ardmore Bladers, I lost 2-3, it was VERY close. This bey is one to watch: It counters a lot of Dynamite combos, unless the opponent is particularly skilled, and counters a lot of Everything Else, especially Rage combos, depending. I know Zone'+Z is hard to get, but I think you might actually have similar or even better results with plain ol Bearing. I elected not to test that today; I was afraid.
It still seems like at least 80% of the attendees had at least one viable combo from the current meta. The accessibility of TT gap is gradually going away, at least in Maryland, and there are a lot of really good bladers in the region.
During the quarter finals, I got paired against TSO. You know how that goes! She's one of the more skilled bladers out there and it shows. It's not so much that she has all of the latest parts, she mostly does; it's that she understands the right parts and tactics for any given situation, makes good decks, and is willing to revisit old parts (even from GT) that still have a lot of potential. Both she and Ardmore ended up using Hybrid in the finals! Hybrid turned off! Weird, but it works! I, on the other hand, do not always make good decks for deck format; today for example, I made a bad deck, or a Not As Good deck. I have occasionally defeated TSO in first stage and the finals in tournaments before, and today was not one of those days. Because she's a better blader. I will freely admit there's a skill gap here: for the most part, TSO is just better than me. I have to have some incredible luck and skill whenever I battle TSO in order to win.
Let's talk about sportsmanship. Bladers, talk to your parents about being good sports. If your parents make a loud spectacle of complaining about the fact that you did not win, and claim it was unfair that you had to play them at all, that's bad sportsmanship. Those sportsmanship rules extend to your parents. If they're not going to be good eggs about the competition, maybe they should stay home. It is especially egregious to complain "Well they only won because they're a professional with all the best parts" when the blader they are a parent of happens to have most of the best parts. You know what really causes one blader to win over another blader most of the time? Skill. Practice. Experience. Sometimes you just have to accept that you are not always going to win it all. That's life. That's Beyblade. I don't think any of the organizers or judges noticed that particular outburst, they were pre-occupied with other things at the time. But I noticed. And if it happens again, well, we can discuss whether or not it should count as a tournament violation. Bladers, make sure your parents behave themselves, or you are the ones who will suffer a penalty!
We had a blader show up with some fake parts. Unfortunately, all their parts were fake. We spotted it before the tournament, and organizers got them something they could use legally in the tournament.
Someone left early, again. Different person this time. At the start of tournaments going forward, we need to tell everyone the rules about leaving. If you're sad because you went 0-3, that's fine, but if you're going to leave, at least tell the organizer. Don't just bail without letting someone know. Just because you can't make it to the finals doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Every match is an opportunity for more practice and experience. And hey, if you bail on a tournament mid-way through without telling the organizers, and you register for another tournament? The organizers are going to talk to you about that, because we don't want a repeat of bailing without notice.
We did have some questions come up during the tournament which I think are going to need more clearly laid out rulings going forward in tournament play. And they are as follows:
1. Can you do a single mode change from a Low DB layer into a high DB layer during a match? I would honestly vote no on this one, Gatinko layers specifically have rules against disassembly on that line during a match, and I guess they never updated for Sparking core modes (pulling out a free spin core mode for a fixed core mode on 2B for example) and for DB layers (low to high or high to low). The way it was ruled during this tournament, a single low to high or vice versa disassembly was allowed once per match, for each blader. It's interesting to note that some matches that are very close on Low vs. Low are much less close on High vs. High.
2. This is an odd one: We had a right spin layer using Hybrid. The Hybrid switch was set to left spin. During a launch, Hybrid accidentally turned itself on (THIS RARELY HAPPENS) and because the spin was the opposite direction to the hybrid spin switch, it very quickly lost all its stamina. Are you allowed to, as a mode change, disassemble the bey, turn the L switch to R, and turn off the bey. This came up during the final match! Personally, I would rule that disassembly for the R/L switch probably not allowed, but it looks like in the rules there's a note that accidental mode changes like wings coming out are supposed to be reset each round, and I figure this would apply to Hybrid tip turning itself on. So let's get a ruling on that!
I had a lot of fun at this tournament, but I think the current direction of the meta is stagnation. The amount of opposite spin matches we have to record is Ridiculous. Judging those is RIDICULOUS. I am still investigating using other first round formats designed to thwart the ties problem. I really want to pursue that so that tournaments don't bog down looking at phones and slo-mo recordings to judge ties. I would rather have to inspect 6 or 10 beyblades before every single match rather than having to slo-mo record over and over and over. Also right spin attack is currently dead, and it is making a defensive stamina meta king once again. The Tyranny of Perfect Phoenix is back, now in Dynamite Drift form.
