The following are all words I have to say about "Let's Go 64", a burst standard tournament that took place after Guilty's release in standard Beystadiums.
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- The tournament venue got moved from one park to another one the day of the tournament! I discovered this when I arrived at the first venue, and it was holding a large event about heated chemotherapy treatments to beat cancer. Huh, okay. Anyway, a bunch of people had to drive another half hour from one venue to the next, but that's okay. What can I say, these things happen! Better to move the tournament than to cancel it, and it was successfully run in a different park some miles away.
- Because of the venue change they delayed the start from 1pm to 2pm. That can be rough on people who had additional plans that day!
- It was a nice day. A tad bit chilly because of all the wind where we ended up playing. Autumn. Autumn is prime time for Beyblade tournaments in the mid-Atlantic.
- We had a 36 person 6 round swiss tournament. We ran 4 beystadiums and they were usually running matches. It didn't take too long compared to other tournaments, and we weren't completely overrun with ties every round. Just most rounds, and mostly me judging those. I am cursed.
- We had a couple of issues with people arriving late. Two people were admitted to the tournament even though they were running late. One person said they were going to arrive "10 minutes late" and actually did arrive 10 minutes late; they were able to complete their round 1 match and all subsequent matches. The other person VASTLY UNDERESTIMATED how distant they were from the venue. They missed their round 1 match. AND they missed their round 2 match. Admitting them to the tournament was a mistake. You might think "Well, it's on them if they lose their first two out of six matches" but that's shortsighted; your win record affects the tiebreaker buchholz at the end of the first stage, and it affects your opponent lineup for the rest of the tournament. It adversely affects you and everyone who gets matches against you. If a good blader who usually wins about 66% of their matches misses two of them and only wins 33%, it really messes with the matchmaking, and it also screws up the buchholz for any opponents they get. In the future, organizers in this area will be VERY reluctant to enter bladers with a history of lateness; do not count on organizers adding you when you're late in the future if you're going to miss a third of the first stage.
- We had the usual issues of people leaving early without telling judges. One blader checked in, was at roll call, but then vanished. Another left part-way. Insolvable problem; you can't fix people. No sense worrying about it.
- Today, Crisiscrusher brought with him box mods that held the standard beystadiums in place. They worked excellently, keeping the beystadiums from rocking around on their usual cardboard. We didn't have to readjust stadiums Ever basically. And we could still lift the stadium to get anything that fell into a pocket. All in all I would say these were a positive. This is not Zero-G format, as Yami would say.
- I missed using the DB beystadiums. As much as I like having stadiums where Qc' functions as it should (I did manage a couple of KO's today) I miss the less-tie-prone DB beystadium and its fun oddities.
- I helped main judge one of the four beystadiums. We had 6+ judges total out of 36 people, so, this went quickly. I saw a lot of different combos and tips and discs, a lot of people trying Guilty, but mostly I saw the same ol' DB beys on the tips that work.
- We had ties again. I think I ended up judging about 5 tie-heavy matches. One of them was particularly long-lasting with many actual ties and the rest being really close. I look forward to not playing Burst Standard for a while. It bad. Guilty did not solve all the problems, because attack launching is still difficult even if you have the correct parts.
- I went 4-2 in the first round. You all know about my Drift driver, and it did VERY well today. I went 4 straight wins with my usual combo, Dynamite Belial+F Over Drift-10.
- I finally lost one to Ardmore (because he has pattern recognition and his similar combo was designed to thwart mine and also he's just a very good blader). TSO and I had a much closer match, she was expecting my usual combo, and brought out World on Right with Hybrid' to counter it. On the other hand, TSO and I had been practicing yesterday, and I knew she knew all my various combos. I knew she'd likely pull out some extremely good combo to beat it. So I switched it up and used Guilty Longinus Karma Qc', a gamble on my part. But DC, I hear you say, you swore to stop using attack combos! Because you keep self-KOing with them! Well, I will have you know 1) My combo was a very good counter to TSO's even though that was entirely accidental and in more skilled hands would have been an easy win and 2) I switched away from using X' to Qc' and now I only self KO a third of the time instead of two thirds. It was a close match! I managed to KO TSO twice, self-KO once, and I got outspun twice. It's a loss, sure, but it's a loss against a good blader and I have no regrets.
- We had a four way tie for the last 3 spots in the top 8. One person went 6-0, three 5-1, and one 4-2 with 15 buchholz. Then there were four people with 4-2 and 12 buchholz. There was some confusion on what to do; Allen said single elimination between the 4, Yami said Round Robin. I said Let Me Read The Rules, and I did, and Allen was right! We had a single elimination bracket where Beymaster and I won our first match, and RobG beat Ian Faith for the third place. Beymaster beat me for seeding, which means I would wind up 7th seed and have to fight the 2nd seed. Oh no. You REALLY want to get the highest seeds you can to avoid having to face difficult opponents again.
- In the finals I faced TSO again. I did not change up my deck significantly, it's the same old stuff I've been using for months. And TSO destroyed me! Hahaha, that's fine. I should change things up next time. TSO made it to fourth, Sniper third, beymaster second, and Ardmore first. None of that is really a surprise, everyone did really well. It's good to see beymaster reach the top two.
- I carried my eventual deck format with me the entire time, despite using one single bey 94% of the time. The other combos I'd built were my Roar Fafnia Giga Bearing-10, and Guilty Longinus Karma Quick'. I scored a few points with Roar in the finals, and a few with Guilty in the finals and end of first.
- The Burst Standard meta is still horrendous on the standard beystadiums with no rules in place for dealing with the ties. Guilty didn't solve it. Many people used Guilty in the first stage, but even the Drift and Bearing combos were doing a decent job of defending against them. It has to do with the Burst Beystadiums and their pockets; they have 3, or 2, usually. And they're hidden behind 2 or more layers of ridge line. MFB and the BB-10s were very attacker friendly. You didn't HAVE to have a really excellent attack launch for attack to work in those. Sometimes they just did. But in Burst? Attack is inherently disadvantaged, made worse when you take away bursting almost entirely since the start of Sparking. I was really hoping Guilty would solve the problems. Nope!
- We had an issue in the finals where someone borrowed parts and didn't tell the judge and opponent. And we found out about it midway through the match. Their opponent had a good case for potentially forcing the match to be redone, but elected not to press the issue, a display of good sportsmanship. What does it matter whether or not another blader borrowed parts? Personally, I do not understand WHY the borrowing notification rules exist. They read as follows: "If you are receiving help–in the form of advice or parts–from someone else, you must announce who is helping you to both the judge and your opponent. Parts borrowed at any point during the event for future use must be announced as well. The exact part(s) do not need to be announced, just the person they are being borrowed from." The Burst Rules and Organizer's Guide do not indicate why these rules exist or what purpose they serve or how to resolve a violation of this. The judges guide just reminds judges to ask about borrowed parts before every match, which is just onerous and doesn't happen.
- My running theory for why the "borrowed parts" rule exists is "people have integrity problems". Okay, hear me out: You should be expecting ANY bey from ANY opponent at ANY time. And if they face you with a good bey, no matter where it came from, That's Life! Blader parents will give good beys to their blader children. Blader children may share good beys with their blader parents. And sometimes people even have friends. It's Fine. There's more to Beyblade than parts, I can usually defeat less experienced bladers using parts from someone else. I don't borrow parts myself but I don't have a problem when people do, even if they don't tell me. But it seems like this rule exists mostly so that "I scouted this person's entire deck over a period of time and I know they have these parts, and I will tailor my combo in an exact way to probably defeat them", doesn't get surprised when their opponent shows up with something else because they borrowed a part or bey. Hey folks, your opponent having a borrowed part or bey isn't the problem here, scouting this other blader is the problem here; an integrity problem! Stop doing that! It's bad sportsmanship which is against the rules. And don't even TRY to argue about this or I will think much less of you. And you know I hold grudges Basically Forever.
- And don't think of trying "But what if one blader keeps loaning a good bey to all his friends" So? What's to stop them from doing that now? So they'll have to say "I have borrowed at least one part from BladerName" before every match. That doesn't mean it'll be used or that they even have it. It's just an excuse for some of you to play more silly mindgames against each other. That's nothing, aside from a general waste of time. Heck, next tournament, I should borrow a Flow frame from Yami and just never use it, and preface each and every match with "I borrowed at least one part from Yami". Whatever the reasons were for this rule, the rationale and punishment for violating it are not clearly defined in the rules. I look at this as rules cruft that only a really unsportsmanlike rules lawyer would ever try to use to their advantage. And I've seen that happen at least twice and I have TERRIBLE views of those people. Fix this. Take that out of the rules.
I made it to the finals, but I didn't make the top four. That's okay! I was fortunate enough to make it to the finals. I'm really looking forward to some non-Standard, this thing's still broken, and it's only going to get worse during the October releases. And as usual, the rules need an overhaul, and some of the rules in there can really lead people to suspect that those who wrote them had ulterior motives. :(
EDIT: Oh! I forgot something!
- I understand giving bladers time to choose their beys. But the amount of indecision going on, and whatever mindgames people are trying to play at the beystadium, I'm really done with it. Folks, PICK A BEY. If you're called to the beystadium, go to the beystadium. Don't hide a couple feet away. When I tell you you have 3 minutes to pick a bey, you have 3 minutes to pick a bey. When I give you a minute warning, I'm not kidding. When you run out of time, you pick a bey dangit! Just pick a bey!!! Stop being indecisive and just go for it! At the end of one particular match after several time warnings I just said "Okay, that's it, the beys you're holding now are the ones you're choosing, let's have this match already." Once again the rules are incredibly vague about how to handle people who just WILL NOT CHOOSE THEIR BEY.
EDIT EDIT: Oh cripes, so much stuff happened yesterday that I apparently buried most of it. I keep remembering things that happened that Weren't Cool.
- Folks, we used to have a mandatory post-match "Good Game" and handshake policy. Obviously because of COVID-19 we stopped doing the handshake, but you still have to verbally acknowledge the opponent and at least PRETEND to be a good spot. No handshakes anymore, but at least a verbal, and optional additions include a thumbs up, or if you feel comfortable enough in this era of potential danger, a fist bump. If you lose a match, Absolutely Do Not Depart The Stadium At High Speed And Avoid The Judge And Your Opponent. That's... ooooh that's not good. Yes, I know, losing can be demoralizing. But you HAVE to stave off your despair for at least a couple of seconds to at least pretend you're being a good sport. Not going to name names, as always. And this is already handled to some degree. But seriously, we're gonna keep an eye on people who do this continually! It hasn't been a problem in the past, it was a problem yesterday.
---
- The tournament venue got moved from one park to another one the day of the tournament! I discovered this when I arrived at the first venue, and it was holding a large event about heated chemotherapy treatments to beat cancer. Huh, okay. Anyway, a bunch of people had to drive another half hour from one venue to the next, but that's okay. What can I say, these things happen! Better to move the tournament than to cancel it, and it was successfully run in a different park some miles away.
- Because of the venue change they delayed the start from 1pm to 2pm. That can be rough on people who had additional plans that day!
- It was a nice day. A tad bit chilly because of all the wind where we ended up playing. Autumn. Autumn is prime time for Beyblade tournaments in the mid-Atlantic.
- We had a 36 person 6 round swiss tournament. We ran 4 beystadiums and they were usually running matches. It didn't take too long compared to other tournaments, and we weren't completely overrun with ties every round. Just most rounds, and mostly me judging those. I am cursed.
- We had a couple of issues with people arriving late. Two people were admitted to the tournament even though they were running late. One person said they were going to arrive "10 minutes late" and actually did arrive 10 minutes late; they were able to complete their round 1 match and all subsequent matches. The other person VASTLY UNDERESTIMATED how distant they were from the venue. They missed their round 1 match. AND they missed their round 2 match. Admitting them to the tournament was a mistake. You might think "Well, it's on them if they lose their first two out of six matches" but that's shortsighted; your win record affects the tiebreaker buchholz at the end of the first stage, and it affects your opponent lineup for the rest of the tournament. It adversely affects you and everyone who gets matches against you. If a good blader who usually wins about 66% of their matches misses two of them and only wins 33%, it really messes with the matchmaking, and it also screws up the buchholz for any opponents they get. In the future, organizers in this area will be VERY reluctant to enter bladers with a history of lateness; do not count on organizers adding you when you're late in the future if you're going to miss a third of the first stage.
- We had the usual issues of people leaving early without telling judges. One blader checked in, was at roll call, but then vanished. Another left part-way. Insolvable problem; you can't fix people. No sense worrying about it.
- Today, Crisiscrusher brought with him box mods that held the standard beystadiums in place. They worked excellently, keeping the beystadiums from rocking around on their usual cardboard. We didn't have to readjust stadiums Ever basically. And we could still lift the stadium to get anything that fell into a pocket. All in all I would say these were a positive. This is not Zero-G format, as Yami would say.
- I missed using the DB beystadiums. As much as I like having stadiums where Qc' functions as it should (I did manage a couple of KO's today) I miss the less-tie-prone DB beystadium and its fun oddities.
- I helped main judge one of the four beystadiums. We had 6+ judges total out of 36 people, so, this went quickly. I saw a lot of different combos and tips and discs, a lot of people trying Guilty, but mostly I saw the same ol' DB beys on the tips that work.
- We had ties again. I think I ended up judging about 5 tie-heavy matches. One of them was particularly long-lasting with many actual ties and the rest being really close. I look forward to not playing Burst Standard for a while. It bad. Guilty did not solve all the problems, because attack launching is still difficult even if you have the correct parts.
- I went 4-2 in the first round. You all know about my Drift driver, and it did VERY well today. I went 4 straight wins with my usual combo, Dynamite Belial+F Over Drift-10.
- I finally lost one to Ardmore (because he has pattern recognition and his similar combo was designed to thwart mine and also he's just a very good blader). TSO and I had a much closer match, she was expecting my usual combo, and brought out World on Right with Hybrid' to counter it. On the other hand, TSO and I had been practicing yesterday, and I knew she knew all my various combos. I knew she'd likely pull out some extremely good combo to beat it. So I switched it up and used Guilty Longinus Karma Qc', a gamble on my part. But DC, I hear you say, you swore to stop using attack combos! Because you keep self-KOing with them! Well, I will have you know 1) My combo was a very good counter to TSO's even though that was entirely accidental and in more skilled hands would have been an easy win and 2) I switched away from using X' to Qc' and now I only self KO a third of the time instead of two thirds. It was a close match! I managed to KO TSO twice, self-KO once, and I got outspun twice. It's a loss, sure, but it's a loss against a good blader and I have no regrets.
- We had a four way tie for the last 3 spots in the top 8. One person went 6-0, three 5-1, and one 4-2 with 15 buchholz. Then there were four people with 4-2 and 12 buchholz. There was some confusion on what to do; Allen said single elimination between the 4, Yami said Round Robin. I said Let Me Read The Rules, and I did, and Allen was right! We had a single elimination bracket where Beymaster and I won our first match, and RobG beat Ian Faith for the third place. Beymaster beat me for seeding, which means I would wind up 7th seed and have to fight the 2nd seed. Oh no. You REALLY want to get the highest seeds you can to avoid having to face difficult opponents again.
- In the finals I faced TSO again. I did not change up my deck significantly, it's the same old stuff I've been using for months. And TSO destroyed me! Hahaha, that's fine. I should change things up next time. TSO made it to fourth, Sniper third, beymaster second, and Ardmore first. None of that is really a surprise, everyone did really well. It's good to see beymaster reach the top two.
- I carried my eventual deck format with me the entire time, despite using one single bey 94% of the time. The other combos I'd built were my Roar Fafnia Giga Bearing-10, and Guilty Longinus Karma Quick'. I scored a few points with Roar in the finals, and a few with Guilty in the finals and end of first.
- The Burst Standard meta is still horrendous on the standard beystadiums with no rules in place for dealing with the ties. Guilty didn't solve it. Many people used Guilty in the first stage, but even the Drift and Bearing combos were doing a decent job of defending against them. It has to do with the Burst Beystadiums and their pockets; they have 3, or 2, usually. And they're hidden behind 2 or more layers of ridge line. MFB and the BB-10s were very attacker friendly. You didn't HAVE to have a really excellent attack launch for attack to work in those. Sometimes they just did. But in Burst? Attack is inherently disadvantaged, made worse when you take away bursting almost entirely since the start of Sparking. I was really hoping Guilty would solve the problems. Nope!
- We had an issue in the finals where someone borrowed parts and didn't tell the judge and opponent. And we found out about it midway through the match. Their opponent had a good case for potentially forcing the match to be redone, but elected not to press the issue, a display of good sportsmanship. What does it matter whether or not another blader borrowed parts? Personally, I do not understand WHY the borrowing notification rules exist. They read as follows: "If you are receiving help–in the form of advice or parts–from someone else, you must announce who is helping you to both the judge and your opponent. Parts borrowed at any point during the event for future use must be announced as well. The exact part(s) do not need to be announced, just the person they are being borrowed from." The Burst Rules and Organizer's Guide do not indicate why these rules exist or what purpose they serve or how to resolve a violation of this. The judges guide just reminds judges to ask about borrowed parts before every match, which is just onerous and doesn't happen.
- My running theory for why the "borrowed parts" rule exists is "people have integrity problems". Okay, hear me out: You should be expecting ANY bey from ANY opponent at ANY time. And if they face you with a good bey, no matter where it came from, That's Life! Blader parents will give good beys to their blader children. Blader children may share good beys with their blader parents. And sometimes people even have friends. It's Fine. There's more to Beyblade than parts, I can usually defeat less experienced bladers using parts from someone else. I don't borrow parts myself but I don't have a problem when people do, even if they don't tell me. But it seems like this rule exists mostly so that "I scouted this person's entire deck over a period of time and I know they have these parts, and I will tailor my combo in an exact way to probably defeat them", doesn't get surprised when their opponent shows up with something else because they borrowed a part or bey. Hey folks, your opponent having a borrowed part or bey isn't the problem here, scouting this other blader is the problem here; an integrity problem! Stop doing that! It's bad sportsmanship which is against the rules. And don't even TRY to argue about this or I will think much less of you. And you know I hold grudges Basically Forever.
- And don't think of trying "But what if one blader keeps loaning a good bey to all his friends" So? What's to stop them from doing that now? So they'll have to say "I have borrowed at least one part from BladerName" before every match. That doesn't mean it'll be used or that they even have it. It's just an excuse for some of you to play more silly mindgames against each other. That's nothing, aside from a general waste of time. Heck, next tournament, I should borrow a Flow frame from Yami and just never use it, and preface each and every match with "I borrowed at least one part from Yami". Whatever the reasons were for this rule, the rationale and punishment for violating it are not clearly defined in the rules. I look at this as rules cruft that only a really unsportsmanlike rules lawyer would ever try to use to their advantage. And I've seen that happen at least twice and I have TERRIBLE views of those people. Fix this. Take that out of the rules.
I made it to the finals, but I didn't make the top four. That's okay! I was fortunate enough to make it to the finals. I'm really looking forward to some non-Standard, this thing's still broken, and it's only going to get worse during the October releases. And as usual, the rules need an overhaul, and some of the rules in there can really lead people to suspect that those who wrote them had ulterior motives. :(
EDIT: Oh! I forgot something!
- I understand giving bladers time to choose their beys. But the amount of indecision going on, and whatever mindgames people are trying to play at the beystadium, I'm really done with it. Folks, PICK A BEY. If you're called to the beystadium, go to the beystadium. Don't hide a couple feet away. When I tell you you have 3 minutes to pick a bey, you have 3 minutes to pick a bey. When I give you a minute warning, I'm not kidding. When you run out of time, you pick a bey dangit! Just pick a bey!!! Stop being indecisive and just go for it! At the end of one particular match after several time warnings I just said "Okay, that's it, the beys you're holding now are the ones you're choosing, let's have this match already." Once again the rules are incredibly vague about how to handle people who just WILL NOT CHOOSE THEIR BEY.
EDIT EDIT: Oh cripes, so much stuff happened yesterday that I apparently buried most of it. I keep remembering things that happened that Weren't Cool.
- Folks, we used to have a mandatory post-match "Good Game" and handshake policy. Obviously because of COVID-19 we stopped doing the handshake, but you still have to verbally acknowledge the opponent and at least PRETEND to be a good spot. No handshakes anymore, but at least a verbal, and optional additions include a thumbs up, or if you feel comfortable enough in this era of potential danger, a fist bump. If you lose a match, Absolutely Do Not Depart The Stadium At High Speed And Avoid The Judge And Your Opponent. That's... ooooh that's not good. Yes, I know, losing can be demoralizing. But you HAVE to stave off your despair for at least a couple of seconds to at least pretend you're being a good sport. Not going to name names, as always. And this is already handled to some degree. But seriously, we're gonna keep an eye on people who do this continually! It hasn't been a problem in the past, it was a problem yesterday.
