Oct-10-2021: "I ain’t Ifraid" and "Pizza VS Hot Dog: Classic" reports

The following are words I have to say about "I ain’t Ifraid of no ghost!", an MFB standard tournament, and "Pizza VS Hot Dog: A Classic Matchup", a Burst Standard tournament.

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Common to both tournaments:
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- The weather was nice. A little bit drizzly every now and then, but mostly just cloudy.

- Time was definitely a factor for a two-tournament day. The first tournament was scheduled to start at noon (it did not) and the second at 3:30. And sunset at that location was estimated at 6:37 PM. We absolutely HAD to move fast on these tournaments to make them happen. Thankfully, the turnout was 13 for both tournaments, and Group Round Robin happens fairly quickly.

- The tournament venue was a little cramped. We had plenty of tables, but overall there is not a ton of space in that location. The picnic tables were all wildly unbalanced, and the use of BB-10 beystadiums meant that ring outs would send beys skittering wildly onto concrete. They elected to use tarps (mine, I'm the infrastructure and equipment guy in these parts) to prevent TOO much damage to beys. Actually, the KOs went skittering onto the concrete anyway, but we did try. At least it wasn't off tables. There was probably a bit of driver damage overall. If we had more than 13 participants for the tournament, that venue probably wasn't going to hold up.

- We used my tarps. Honestly, I'm starting to think CrisisCrusher07 has the right idea with his boxes. Those are some good boxes and I just want to make some of those.

- Because Ifraid ended about an hour before Vs began, the organizers decided to do a non-WBO round robin involving [[Hyperlink Blocked]]. I mean, it's good that they didn't want people to be bored, but the timing of it was kind of close. It worked out, and they had fun, but in the future I'm going to recommend we not add unscheduled events on a day that already has two events in a time crunch.

- In each tournament, there were about 1-2 participants who either needed to borrow parts (having few) or didn't understand the format and mostly brought the wrong beys. I ended up lending out both launchers and beys during the tournaments. Honestly, there's no fixing this; some people are going to have few parts because they've been away for a while or are relatively new, and there will always be that small contingent of newer bladers and parents who did not read the rules, and also the rules are long and confusing. That's life!

- I enjoy how 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.

- Nobody left either tournament early without telling judges. Cool. Who are you doppelgangers, and what have you done with the real WBO bladers??? You can't trick me, I know all about your evil plots! Or, I don't know, maybe it just didn't happen because we only ever had at most 1 new blader per tournament.

- I had some family tragedy recently, one final and one ongoing. I was feeling really out of it. I wasn't intending to judge. But I judged anyway, there was a need for active judges and also I needed to periodically remind both organizers to call out more matches. Beyblade was a necessary distraction. Thank you for holding these Beyblade tournaments, I REALLY need distractions right now. I don't mean to scare anybody, but your life will go through phases. You'll reach the part in your adult life when you attend a lot of weddings. And later on you're going to reach a part where you attend a lot of funerals. But, hang in there. It's mostly good.

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"I ain’t Ifraid of no ghost!"
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- This tournament started a little late, we were waiting on some of the BB-10 beystadiums to arrive. But not too late. It was Friedpasta's first tournament as an organizer! There were some growing pains. Setting up the brackets can be kind of challenging, especially in group round robin, and it took him a couple of tries to get it right.

- We had a 13 person 2 group round robin tournament. We had 4 beystadiums and never ran more than 3, there really wasn't space for it. Often only 2 would run, sometimes just 1. It didn't take too long compared to other tournaments because round robin presents you with incredible flexibility in which order matches can be conducted, so you rarely have a situation where you are waiting for a single match to conclude. It was MFB, but there were a fair number of ties. Thankfully, I never had to judge those! Curse broken?

- I do love BB-10 Beystadiums. KOs are frequent and fun. Just an overall better stadium than a B-09. There, I said it. I wish BB-10s were more readily available, honestly, I'd prefer to have Burst matches on those.

- I helped backup judge. We had about half the people there with judge experience, so, this went quickly. I saw very little variety! Y'all are crazy for Synchrome BD145RDF. Yes, I know it's good, it has acceptable stamina, great defense, and can be used for great offense. But I saw a sinful glut of those combos in a lot of the matches I faced, a lot of matches I judged, and in the decks I had to battle against. Don't get me wrong, I have that exact same combo and I gave some thought to using it today. In the end I decided not to, and it paid off. There are some very real counters to it, to include Dragoon BGrin and Duo SA165MB.

- I went 4-1 in the first round. My main bey for first stage was Duo Horologium SA165MB. This is a fairly safe pick against more or less everything. There are good ways to beat it, and they're a gamble. Yami beat me, and that was the one first stage round I didn't pick Duo, but his combo would've beaten it anyway. Killerken Dragoon BGrin. That came up a bit during the finals.

- In the semifinals I faced TSO, who was in the other group. I did not change up my deck significantly, it's the same old stuff I've been using for the rest of the tournament, DuoMB and Dragoon BGrin. I have a Phantom Cancer 230TB in there that I did not end up using. TSO's deck was good, had a lot of attack options, but I have gotten fairly decent at launching beys on BGrin in such a way that I can Mostly avoid the really nasty hits from attack types, or get hit into the wall. I was able to win the match, entirely with Killerken Dragoon BGrin. It was not an expected combo and I was lucky to have included it.

- In the finals I faced Yami again. TSO thankfully did not tell him what I was using. I asked her to please not tell him, because I didn't want the surprise to be spoiled. Yami's deck had a similar amount of counters and I was very fortunate to be able to dodge most of his attacks and counter his Duo 230MB. I did end up using my Duo a bit here. It was a close one but I managed to beat him.

- There was a truly heinous amount of scouting going on during the tournament. I witnessed one blader say "Oh, I have a match against this guy coming up, what's he using?" and one of his friends instantly gave him an accurate answer. Ohh, I Did Not Like That. That's not good. Thumbs down on that! Folks, it's an integrity thing. Please, conduct yourselves with integrity!

- The MFB Standard meta is not Completely stagnant. There's room for variation and options. But I was shocked by the amount of Synchrome BD145RDF. Shocked, I say. Folks, it's got bad LAD, because BD usually has to point down! Unless it's being used for Defense or Attack, it's going to get outspun.

I got 1st place. Huh. Well, I guess I must've done something right.

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"Pizza VS Hot Dog: A Classic Matchup"
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- This tournament started about on time, and actually didn't take that long. We were racing against the sunlight, and we were done in about an hour and a half.

- One blader got missed during initial setup. He was there, and didn't make it into the brackets. They had to add him to one of the existing groups and re-enter the already played match results. This did not significantly skew the group seeding according to beyrank, as his beyrank was not among the higher numbers across attendees. So just adding him to one of the groups was actually okay. We were lucky.

- We had a 13 person 2 group round robin tournament. We had 4 beystadiums and never ran more than 3, there really wasn't space for it. Often only 2 would run, sometimes just 1. It didn't take too long compared to other tournaments because round robin presents you with incredible flexibility in which order matches can be conducted, so you rarely have a situation where you are waiting for a single match to conclude. It was Burst Classic, so I don't remember there being any ties.

- B-09 stadiums are completely adequate for Burst Classic, no question there. KOs are possible, no bey is so large that it endures wall or floor scrape city, which I am Not the Mayor of.

- I helped backup judge. We had about half the people there with judge experience, so, this went quickly. I didn't see the same beys being used over and over by everyone, so, that was good.

- I went 4-2 in the first round. For the first 3 matches, I was using Acid Anubis Heavy Quattro, defaulting to the Metal Survive tip but sometimes switching to the Orbit tip. I was feeling whimsical! An early win against TSO with it made me think it had potential, so I continued to use it for the next two matches, both losses. It turns out that a good counter to Stamina Quattro is Stamina Orbit, which I would face for the following two matches. At this point, I decided to bring an old favorite out of retirement, Yegdrion Heavy Survive-S. That thing is exceptionally good, and my following 3 matches were wins.

- My group had 7 people in it. Because I went 4-2 and others went 6-0 and 5-1 in my group, I did not make it to the finals. That's okay! I did an okay job.

- The Burst Classic meta is always interesting. Because new tips are coming out all the time you get a lot of variation and options. There's room to experiment and innovate. And it's fun.

I did alright! Didn't make it to finals, but 4-2 is nothing to sneeze at.
Wow, I'm surprised you didn't make it into finals with a 4-2. But yeah, it was fun.
(Oct. 11, 2021  10:40 PM)bladekid Wrote: Wow, I'm surprised you didn't make it into finals with a 4-2. But yeah, it was fun.

Broyeeto went 5-1 and Geetster99 went 6-0. I'm not surprised. Cause they good!
I had a really good time yesterday, was a little skeptical when you(crab) pulled out Quattro but it did better than I expected. I really love the burst classic meta, mfb standard? I have no idea what I’m doing for the most part. Still a good day seeing everyone, hopefully we see another classic tournament in the near future!
I had a lot of fun yesterday. No clue what I’m doing in MFB standard (proven by my 1-5 record) but I love it. I really like how the metal sounds and hits. Managed to get a few lucky KOs too. I used Basalt Horogium 145 WD/R2F, and I enjoyed it a lot. I used WD for my first two matches, and decided I’d rather use attack. I got close to winning in two matches, but I failed both of them. One of them I didn’t get a flower pattern in, and the other I completely missed the stadium.

It’s a cool combo, but it really needs a good launch and a bit of luck.

For the Classic tourney, I used Victory Valkyrie Knuckle Xtreme’ for all 6 rounds. I went 2-4, and I know I could’ve done better. I did have a lot of fun, and learnt a lot. For my first battle I was against TSO, and it was close. I got a lot of good launches in, but almost lost, only winning with a last second burst. My next couple of matches were all losses, and that’s fine with me. I had great matchups in all of them, I just messed up my launches. I managed to get it together and squeeze in another win, but 2-4 just doesn’t cut it for top 4.

Overall, I had a lot of fun, learnt a lot, and enjoyed seeing many of you again. Hope to see y’all again this Saturday.