The following are words I have to say about "Hyper HyperSpheres 2", an unranked Hypersphere format tournament.
- I got to judge Cheetoblader's Hypersphere tournament today. For most of it I was calling out the matches, and CheetoBlader and Friedpasta did much of the jugding. There were 3 beystadiums total, but we only had 3 judges. Everyone had parts, no one needed to borrow. There was a variety of God+ Hasbro layers at the tournament, not nearly as much Outer and Haswheel as last time.
- We had a 9 person round robin, followed by a 4 person single elimination finals. Originally it looked like we would only have 6, but then 3 more bladers suddenly showed up. Hooray!
- The weather was fine when the tournament ran. Originally, this was supposed to happen on the 16th, but it got rescheduled due to rain. A lot of people registered who didn't show up. Some of them couldn't make it on the new date, others were spambots, and then there was that one guy from Vietnam who was just confused. And then there were just a whole bunch of people who didn't show up.
- There was some location confusion. We couldn't get the library, it wasn't reserved in advance and it was booked until 2. We were going to have it at the Gazebo, but a wedding had reserved it. We played in the grass, and it was uneven, and I had to use my level and mats to try and even the beystadiums. Tricky.
- By half an hour in we had about half the first stage matches done with. The remaining matches, involving one of the three judges, we could only run one at a time mostly, so we went down from 2 beystadiums being used to 1 fairly quickly. If we'd had another judge, we could've avoided this problem and finished sooner. Still, we were done by what, 3:30? 2 hours 15 minutes, fast tournament.
- The presence of both ranked and unranked tournaments is confusing to some bladers. Rather than asking if anyone can attend a ranked tournament, they apparently assumed they couldn't attend a ranked tournament until attending an unranked tournament. I hope we cleared up that confusion. Bladers, when in doubt, ask. The answer to "Can I attend a tournament if I have valid parts?" is usually yes.
- The finals roster was not surprising. I, Cheetoblader, and Friedpasta made it, and so did supernova85, who made it to the finals last Hypersphere tournament.
- We had a three way tie for the 4th spot of the finals! Three bladers went 4-4! But because it's round robin, everyone had match history, and One of those bladers had beaten the other two during first stage. So, that more or less settled the tiebreaker issue entirely. I like how clear and good Round Robin tiebreakers are. Not messy at all. Not like buchholz.
- I went 7-1 in the first stage. I learned a lot from the last tournament, namely that Sr3 and B3 are still amazing. I ran B3.Outer.Linear-H almost exclusively during first stage, except against Friedpasta, and I lost that one. Unlike G3, B3 doesn't face problems will being pushed up against the wall and losing stamina. As long as it can make contact with the opposing bey, it can usually spin steal, and has good LAD. On same spin, it has great defense and can usually outspin. I thought about using Keep-H this time, and had it on my Sr3 combo, but I really did fear the spring strength.
- We only had 1 KO this time, I got it against Friedpasta during the first stage, but lost.
- I made it to the finals this time. My finals deck format was B3.Outer.Linear-H, G3.HasbroWheel.Rise-H, Sr3(Right).00Cross.Keep-H. I really don't trust the spring on my Keep-H. Against CheetoBlader, I started with B3, and ended up switching to my G3. It turns out he'd prepared well against my B3, but his deck mostly wasn't able to beat my G3. I'd spent the entire tournament getting by on opposite spin and better LAD, but once I switched to low layer destabilization there was just a lot of difficulty getting under me. Rather than all of the wall crushes I endured in the last tournament with G3, it did much better in the finals today. The different tip choice probably helped. I had similar G3 success against Friedpasta, and won 1st place. Friedpasta 2nd, CheetoBlader 3rd, supernova85 4th.
- Bladers kept asking me mid-tournament which layers and discs and tips were permitted. There were a lot of attempts to use illegal tips, and I accidentally missed a blader using a TT layer in their deck during semi-finals, until it was caught and replaced. Honest mistake, no harm no foul. It hadn't scored any points, and unfortunately neither did its replacement. A lot of newer bladers don't know the parts so well and have trouble telling apart TT, Hasbro, and fake.
- I know a lot of people didn't show up because it's Hypersphere, an even more restrictive version of Hasbro-only, and a lot didn't show up because the date moved. I still think this format is very fun. If you have parts or can borrow parts, I encourage you to try it. I would like to see more people at this kind of tournament, even though I'm happy enough with round robin format.
- EDIT, Forgot to add this originally: Judges, you need to focus during matches! Don't have little side conversations with each other in the middle of a match! don't turn away and talk to someone else or one of the match participants about something else. Focus on the match! Finish the match! I had to remind you numerous times yesterday when you were getting distracted. As a blader involved in a match, when the judge gets distracted, I will not hesitate to remind you to focus on the task at hand!
- Turbo Spryzen 4, Sr3, B3, and G3 are still the MVPs in this format. It's Hasbro so you just aren't going to get a good weight, unless you use Hasbro NL3 which has its own problems and is really unsuited to Hypersphere because of shape and because attack is infeasible. So since weight doesn't factor in, the main concerns are stamina, LAD, and how likely wall bouncing is. You do NOT want to waste stamina crashing against a wall, so bigger layers are NOT better. Sr3 and B3 excel for this. I lost a lot of stamina with B3 during my powerful launches and it still won. Turbo Spryzen's just good in general. G3 can be a mixed bag; it has high stamina, it rides very low and tends to destabilize other beys, but it's wide and can be crushed against the wall. But it has done so well between the two tournaments that if this format is going to be run again, it will likely be banned.
This was fun. I got 1st! We should have more of this, ideally with more participants.
Here is a picture of me having a good time at the tournament.
![[Image: squidgame-unit-101-216-1634837690.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/WVQr1v7/squidgame-unit-101-216-1634837690.jpg)
And here is a picture of the top 3.
![[Image: PXL-20211023-193648711-MP.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/Jpv7m3G/PXL-20211023-193648711-MP.jpg)
And here is the top 3 and two other participants.
![[Image: PXL-20211023-193723065.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/cDJt7t2/PXL-20211023-193723065.jpg)
Why am I wearing chainmail gauntlets in some of these pictures? A better question is why aren't They wearing chainmail gauntlets in some of these pictures.
- I got to judge Cheetoblader's Hypersphere tournament today. For most of it I was calling out the matches, and CheetoBlader and Friedpasta did much of the jugding. There were 3 beystadiums total, but we only had 3 judges. Everyone had parts, no one needed to borrow. There was a variety of God+ Hasbro layers at the tournament, not nearly as much Outer and Haswheel as last time.
- We had a 9 person round robin, followed by a 4 person single elimination finals. Originally it looked like we would only have 6, but then 3 more bladers suddenly showed up. Hooray!
- The weather was fine when the tournament ran. Originally, this was supposed to happen on the 16th, but it got rescheduled due to rain. A lot of people registered who didn't show up. Some of them couldn't make it on the new date, others were spambots, and then there was that one guy from Vietnam who was just confused. And then there were just a whole bunch of people who didn't show up.
- There was some location confusion. We couldn't get the library, it wasn't reserved in advance and it was booked until 2. We were going to have it at the Gazebo, but a wedding had reserved it. We played in the grass, and it was uneven, and I had to use my level and mats to try and even the beystadiums. Tricky.
- By half an hour in we had about half the first stage matches done with. The remaining matches, involving one of the three judges, we could only run one at a time mostly, so we went down from 2 beystadiums being used to 1 fairly quickly. If we'd had another judge, we could've avoided this problem and finished sooner. Still, we were done by what, 3:30? 2 hours 15 minutes, fast tournament.
- The presence of both ranked and unranked tournaments is confusing to some bladers. Rather than asking if anyone can attend a ranked tournament, they apparently assumed they couldn't attend a ranked tournament until attending an unranked tournament. I hope we cleared up that confusion. Bladers, when in doubt, ask. The answer to "Can I attend a tournament if I have valid parts?" is usually yes.
- The finals roster was not surprising. I, Cheetoblader, and Friedpasta made it, and so did supernova85, who made it to the finals last Hypersphere tournament.
- We had a three way tie for the 4th spot of the finals! Three bladers went 4-4! But because it's round robin, everyone had match history, and One of those bladers had beaten the other two during first stage. So, that more or less settled the tiebreaker issue entirely. I like how clear and good Round Robin tiebreakers are. Not messy at all. Not like buchholz.
- I went 7-1 in the first stage. I learned a lot from the last tournament, namely that Sr3 and B3 are still amazing. I ran B3.Outer.Linear-H almost exclusively during first stage, except against Friedpasta, and I lost that one. Unlike G3, B3 doesn't face problems will being pushed up against the wall and losing stamina. As long as it can make contact with the opposing bey, it can usually spin steal, and has good LAD. On same spin, it has great defense and can usually outspin. I thought about using Keep-H this time, and had it on my Sr3 combo, but I really did fear the spring strength.
- We only had 1 KO this time, I got it against Friedpasta during the first stage, but lost.
- I made it to the finals this time. My finals deck format was B3.Outer.Linear-H, G3.HasbroWheel.Rise-H, Sr3(Right).00Cross.Keep-H. I really don't trust the spring on my Keep-H. Against CheetoBlader, I started with B3, and ended up switching to my G3. It turns out he'd prepared well against my B3, but his deck mostly wasn't able to beat my G3. I'd spent the entire tournament getting by on opposite spin and better LAD, but once I switched to low layer destabilization there was just a lot of difficulty getting under me. Rather than all of the wall crushes I endured in the last tournament with G3, it did much better in the finals today. The different tip choice probably helped. I had similar G3 success against Friedpasta, and won 1st place. Friedpasta 2nd, CheetoBlader 3rd, supernova85 4th.
- Bladers kept asking me mid-tournament which layers and discs and tips were permitted. There were a lot of attempts to use illegal tips, and I accidentally missed a blader using a TT layer in their deck during semi-finals, until it was caught and replaced. Honest mistake, no harm no foul. It hadn't scored any points, and unfortunately neither did its replacement. A lot of newer bladers don't know the parts so well and have trouble telling apart TT, Hasbro, and fake.
- I know a lot of people didn't show up because it's Hypersphere, an even more restrictive version of Hasbro-only, and a lot didn't show up because the date moved. I still think this format is very fun. If you have parts or can borrow parts, I encourage you to try it. I would like to see more people at this kind of tournament, even though I'm happy enough with round robin format.
- EDIT, Forgot to add this originally: Judges, you need to focus during matches! Don't have little side conversations with each other in the middle of a match! don't turn away and talk to someone else or one of the match participants about something else. Focus on the match! Finish the match! I had to remind you numerous times yesterday when you were getting distracted. As a blader involved in a match, when the judge gets distracted, I will not hesitate to remind you to focus on the task at hand!
- Turbo Spryzen 4, Sr3, B3, and G3 are still the MVPs in this format. It's Hasbro so you just aren't going to get a good weight, unless you use Hasbro NL3 which has its own problems and is really unsuited to Hypersphere because of shape and because attack is infeasible. So since weight doesn't factor in, the main concerns are stamina, LAD, and how likely wall bouncing is. You do NOT want to waste stamina crashing against a wall, so bigger layers are NOT better. Sr3 and B3 excel for this. I lost a lot of stamina with B3 during my powerful launches and it still won. Turbo Spryzen's just good in general. G3 can be a mixed bag; it has high stamina, it rides very low and tends to destabilize other beys, but it's wide and can be crushed against the wall. But it has done so well between the two tournaments that if this format is going to be run again, it will likely be banned.
This was fun. I got 1st! We should have more of this, ideally with more participants.
Here is a picture of me having a good time at the tournament.
And here is a picture of the top 3.
And here is the top 3 and two other participants.
Why am I wearing chainmail gauntlets in some of these pictures? A better question is why aren't They wearing chainmail gauntlets in some of these pictures.
