Sorry this is a little late, haha. Just some general reflections on Saturday (which might be worth absolutely nothing considering my poor showing, haha!).
Basalt.
The tournament was really interesting in that I had never seen so many Basalts at one time. Admittedly, the UK is the only other metagame I have experience in, so this is where this particular observation stems from. In London, there are a lot less Basalt-based customisations, but I'm not particularly sure why. MF/MF-H Basalt Kerbecs BD145CS is still an incredible powerhouse here, and it's easy to see why. As I recall, people who stuck to their guns would invariably have success with this particular customisation. I chose to use MF Meteo L Drago CH120XF to counter this, but despite weak launching and having relatively high success rates with this at home, I was KOd and even on one occasion, outspinned. The tournament was definitely food for thought in light of the prospective Basalt ban, which I'll touch upon later again.
Metagame.
Apart from the widespread usage of MF-H Basalt Kerbecs BD145CS (which apparently you guys affectionately call "Mooncake", haha?), nothing else struck me as particularly different from anything I'd seen previously. Although I haven't participated in a tournament recently in the UK, Gravity was quite popular here (this might have changed, since), but significantly less so in Singapore - it seemed that the metagame here is less fond of dual spin directions and spin stealing, and more focussed on more conventional powerhouses like Basalt and Scythe. I believe Uwik also commented on my use of Gravity and Meteo in reference to this. Because of the way the groups were organised, I didn't face any Indonesian players myself, so I don't really have any lasting memories of their metagame, unfortunately! Obviously, everything I mention in this post is purely my own opinion and based on my sketchy memory of events from Saturday; I'd love to hear more things about your general metagame here.
Competition, and success.
I was incredibly impressed with the high level of competitive success shown by the Singaporeans. I've always been a huge believer that knowledge is not everything - I can only point to the likes of Daegor42 and Kai-V, who I am absolutely sure they have competitive knowledge which not only matches but perhaps exceeds a lot of higher ranking players, but they don't have the ranking to show for it (this isn't a dig guys, I promise, haha!). I honestly think that competitive nerve is more important, and for this, I will point to Valentin. This guy is pretty much my best friend from the boards, and by his own admission, he is completely out of touch with the metagame, but this guy pretty much sweeps every tournament he participates in. I'm absolutely not trying to say that Singaporean players lack knowledge - what I'm trying to say is that a lot of them possess incredibly nerve and experience in competitive situations; I saw someone using Beat and the Flower Pattern they produced was incredible. This was something which Uwik mentioned too; he also told me that a lot of them were former WBBA Champions at one point too. It's an old cliche, but success only breeds success. This culture of winning can only be honed through regular participation.
WBO Format.
I gathered from a lot of people on Saturday that this wasn't a format people were particularly familiar with, but despite this, was enjoyed by a lot of people. This makes me really happy because having spoken to Azlanslayer earlier about potentially hosting WBO events in Singapore (prior to the proposal of this event), he said that this might not be particularly feasible because of WBO fees. Hopefully, first hand experience of a WBO event might get a lot of you to reconsider, haha! There are a lot of attractive incentives to participate in our organised play, such as the Beypoint System and Blader Rewards. Honestly, the event was a absolute success (huge props to Pcyborg and Uwik for organising this!), and I would be really happy to see more WBO events here in the future.
I had an amazing time and would once again would like to thank Pcyborg for his kind hospitality and helpful PMs, as well as Uwik for helping host. Everyone who I met and spoke to were incredibly friendly too. You guys are incredible!
![[Image: FCFIST.png]](https://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k609/uwik77/FCFIST.png)
Those pictures of the beyblades are amazing.
![[Image: chups3.png]](https://img705.imageshack.us/img705/9858/chups3.png)
