Jun. 02, 2022 3:18 PM
Tournament Report: BeyDays Perth 29/05/2022
Wow, what a day. This is my first tournament report, it’s going to be long because I want to talk a bit about the leadup and setup of the first tournament I’ve run in a long, long time.
I rocked up at 8:30AM to secure our pavilion. Weather was quite cold for Perth, nothing like the conditions Crab hates over in Maryland (positively balmy by comparison), but the breeze was biting and we were in a fairly windy spot for us Perthians. Look, we don’t like the cold. Hadn’t been here before. Oh well. Would like to run these indoors.
Before I get into things… PLEASE check out the pictures from the event taken by Antonio, one of the parents present. They are gorgeous:
GORGEOUS PHOTOS OF PERTH BEYDAYS IN HERE
I set up a clear tournament area – the pavilion was a great spot for this whole thing layout wise with room for the parents to hang around and benches etc. I laid out a rug for free play stadiums I had bought (they kinda ended up moved everywhere by the attendees anyway, but hey). I set up a table for the stadium and levelled the uneven ground with some cardboard, checking with a spirit level, and rigged up my mic-turned-camera stand over the stadium so I could record each match clearly - I wanted to ensure that people could ask for video review or judges could double check things (especially with everyone judging, including myself, having either no experience or not having done so for a decade) and felt that if we were going to have video review everyone should have access to it every round. I provided soft drinks and water (though there are plenty left) to keep people going. I set up, did a bit of practice til I was comfortable with my attack launches while I waited to see who would show.
Leading up to this event I had put off hosting as I wasn’t sure I’d get the people. I figured I’d scrounge to make eight and worked out contingencies around that. We had 2 registered WBO members – myself and shrim. Perth is a small, small city. It’s been a decade since I’ve done stuff here. For better or for worse, there are other Beyblade orgs here who I figured the kids would like.
We ended up with 19 players including a late entry.
I was surprised. Even with 18 registered at the start of tournament day, I expected drops. No one dropped, not even LOML who literally flew in from Sydney to join us. For reference, that is not a small ways - it's a little further than LA to Atlanta. Incredible passion for the game.
With 17 registered the night before the tournament, I expected at least one no show and had thus prepared for Group Round Robin. I’d done some reading on Swiss just in case, but not as thoroughly… I had to change everything over and rework the pre-tournament announcements with a whole bunch of excited kids and adults raring to go. We got there. Thankfully, ByronI who arrived first had some experience with Challonge and pointed me through some stuff I was a bit puzzled on. The printed organiser guide I bought just in case helped.
As someone who doesn’t like public speaking and is (perhaps surprising to our members) very shy, I definitely felt a little intimidated as a first time host, but chatting to Fryd Ryce (who I had spoken to the night before) and ByronI - two fantastic people, I got my head in the game. I managed to find my loud voice and with the help of parents I had everyone listening as I ran through the specifics.
Fryd Ryce was MVP for the day – he bought briefcases full of the latest DB Beyblades and let the kids use them for free play and in the tournament. It made the kids’ days that much more special getting to play with the Beyblades they’d seen in youtube videos (and having a real chance vs those of us who had bought the big guns). The most impressive thing though, and something I think that I think really shows what Perth is like? He got them all back.
Of course, I had to face him first match of the tournament and first match of finals - I won both but man, the finals match in particular was dicey, he’s damn good. Shrim also put up a massive fight in the finals - getting me to 4-4 after we decided to finish our match the only way two Esteemed Gentlemen could - a Guilty Mirror, and Calvin Mendoza - well, I reckon if he had a good Guilty combo instead of Rage I would have been in a very bad spot. Nonetheless the practice paid off and my launch was good enough often enough to get me across the line into 1st, with Calvin Mendoza 2nd and LeviathanFish beating shrim for 3rd (shrim got outpicked, though to be fair - LeviathanFish had been using right spin stamina all day and continued to do so here).
Per the same policy I have always stuck to, I did not take the physical prize for my own tournament, and we shuffled prizes down to 2nd, 3rd and 4th - which meant everyone actually got something pretty useful to them!
In terms of what showed up combo wise, we had a lot of stock DB thanks to Fryd Ryce bringing all of his stuff, as well as a number of very solid combos - including a fairly remarkable amount of Guilty (on Quick’ and Xtreme’). For my part I leaned hard on Guilty Longinus Giga MX-0 and given I’d been practising hard this paid off really well despite my shaky hands (nerves…), only dropping one match all tournament (big shout out to for managing to take me down) thanks to a sufficiently consistent launch, and because everyone else was using Nx+S on Guilty so when they tried to mirror me I was basically guaranteed the win. The stamina we saw was pretty eclectic, with people seeing success with a lot of things and a lot of groaning about LAD battles. I didn’t use it much, but secured one round in first stage as well as the end of my finals match with Fryd Ryce using Devil+F+L Belial2 Over Moment - the Red Mm is critical and I think Devil actually matters here too. Bl2 can be swapped for Perseus as needed. This combo basically trashes everything in same because Moment gives the layer the balance needed to grind and trap everything and push them into the floor, as well as having the ability to knock over HXt+’, and it also does amazingly well in opposite spin - it’s super reliable but I wasn’t comfortable spamming it with all the Guilty flying around. I think I was the only person who used Ultimate, but I didn’t use it as much as planned - it actually exclusively ended up in attack vs attack matches in deck inadvertently, and I managed to knock out shrim’s Prominence Valkyrire Giga Zn’+Z with Guilty anyway. Ultimate is absolutely fantastic and I was ready to use it a lot, but in my testing it didn’t do great in the mirror with Guilty which made it riskier. I didn’t use it as much as I wanted - however when we get around to 3on3 as the area is better equipped, you bet it’ll be making a lot more of an appearance. Nonetheless, my Guilty was described as “overpowered” and my deck and play as “aggressive” so I was very content with my showing!
We did see some more eclectic stamina combos (e.g. Wave’) do quite well, and Mobius was more popular than Drift aside from a couple of specific players. Not a tonne of Bearing combos and they… didn’t do that great when they did show up? Greatest Raphael, Dynamite+F and Vanish saw a lot of use and Prominence relatively little, Roar a surprising amount and Astral was used primarily by LeviathanFish. It was definitely not bland, and was a lot more competitive than I honestly expected.
Oh, and Emperor Forneus[LC] Outer Cycle was OP as heck, getting our late entrant EmpForneus16 to the finals. Yeah, hard to believe I know - especially when you consider he’s barely tall enough to reach the stadium (wouldn’t let me drop it down either) but he has the spirit of a fighter and a heck of a launch, and Cycle had enough LAD to work with his opponents perhaps underestimating him to get him across the line.
In fact, the passion of all of our younger competitors was inspiring - I don’t really want to shout out individuals any more because I really just want to list all of them. Their passion for the game really made me want to just… sit down and do free play, coaching and combo building with them more than playing and judging, but I had to stay focussed. To this extent, it was wonderful to see all of our older bladers step up, spend some time with the kids and help them out - including comforting them after losses. Big shout out to the community for being so solid and supportive.
The tournament itself ran pretty smoothly. There were a couple times I had to consult the guidebooks I had printed, but for the most part it was pretty easy and thanks to the video review we had few draws. Judge’s decisions were understood as final, and parents were supportive. Honestly, a really good day especially as it was basically everyone’s first time!
There was a lot of positive feedback from parents about the event and the prospect of future events - as most players don’t use the forums much if at all, I set up a contact register so I could contact everyone and pretty much everyone signed off on it!
Some General Notes:
1. Dropped players in Swiss SUCKS: It tanks your Bucholz if you lose to the person who dropped, and this can also mean some players can end up playing only 3 matches. I understand people needing to go home early - no hard feelings at all by the way – wanna be totally clear about that, because I'm incredibly glad to have people coming to play and I totally get if you gotta run. There really needs to be a better way to handle this. IDK if that's just the nature of Swiss and unchangeable but still...
2. Cross-Brand Stuff: While other organizers were strongly opposed to the idea and said it would make things more complicated, in my experience today, a number of times it came up that people were running Hasbro drivers on TT Layers. None of the inverse (probably more of an issue for lighter formats). It would have been easier for me personally in this specific situation if I did not have to police this and we allowed it and all the new avenues that come with it. I don’t plan to really pursue this as a proposal, but… My 2c - I would have preferred it as an option.
3. No Fakes! I was dreading pointing out fakes… And no one tried to use any – this is thanks to Beyblade Club WA Inc having run community events with bans on fakes – all the kids were already across it.
4. Legalise HasPro For Accessibility Please: My launcher handle smashed through the guard of my B09 two days out from the tournament. Thankfully I had bought another on a whim recently. You know what would have been better than the stress? Being able to buy a replacement from a big box store literally across from my work place. It’s a great stadium for standard and also the most accessible for participants. Numerous parents were asking me about how to get a Burst Standard and the answer wasn’t super appealing - if we want to give kids the chance to practice in the stadiums we use to make tournaments fairer, this is a good way to go. As for DB, multiple people talked about it at the event… not in positive terms. Stamina matches aren’t so popular here, so being more forgiving to attack (which people ran a lot) would be extra nice.
5. Recording Matches Kept People Happy: I know this is a subject of debate but I did find the use of a camera resolved matters swiftly. I was able to quickly pull down my phone, play the part of the match in slow motion, and assuage any doubts about the outcome or check flash rebounds. Rebounds can be hard, but this resolved any issues with them quickly, and we managed to deal with LAD matches (thankfully not too many) despite the groans when people realised what they had to sit through. This only worked though because we all respected the judges and their calls and raised our queries with minimal arguments.
6. Single Bey Finals would be a nice option to have back: I enjoyed deck personally, but for the tournament I miss single bey finals. I know a lot of people now don’t remember The Time Before Deck, but for the entirety of MFB’s release schedule, we had Single Bey finals and I wished I had the option here today - call me old fashioned. Or just old. All the kids who made finals lost the first round thereof. I did my best to teach people about deck and run them through them but I do think it gives us “big kids” a bit much of an advantage. It’s just a bit of a learning curve for a new scene. I do like deck as a format for sure, and it worked out really well for me, but for a scene where most people don’t know what deck is until they arrive… Perhaps it would be nice to have an option for hosts, even just in newer areas, to keep things simple and affordable. Alternatively, I’d like the option to run deck first stage to have a tournament where we can basically spend the whole time teaching people deck.
7. Spin Direction Switching/Disassembly Changes: Kids really struggled to understand why they couldn’t switch spin direction on things like Lord, World and Astral, despite being allowed a disassembly mode change, and also didn’t understand being able to do the latter only once (it seemed to discourage them doing it a lot). IMO our rules would be more streamlined by allowing the manufacturer intent here, and I don’t think it would overpower the formats even with Master and Lord in GT (doesn’t really save them from being knocked out, the one place I thought of was like, Master Almight Weight Defense and it doesn’t work well enough).
8. QuadDrive Rulings Please: I was scared this would come up but thankfully it didn’t. We really need to define how we handle QD Drivers as parts (is Assault-QD+Kick the same as Assault-QD+Moment) and changing tips, what you can start with etc. It shouldn’t be that hard to get done and it is very much going to be a thing we have to look at in Classic too.
9. Attack works, but I do kinda get why people don’t use it: Guilty carried me super hard, and my launch was sufficiently consistent. However, I also practised a pretty ridiculous amount. As much as I think Guilty on Rubber is the strongest thing in the format, I don’t know if it’s advantageous enough in Deck specifically for people to want to put the type of work in that I had to - in the end if you win R1 you can basically counterpick from there on. Based on that, I do think 2 Point KO is something we should seriously look at.
10. If You Build It They Will Come: The most important takeaway though – we started with 2 people and have 19 people with everyone wanting to go again. To those hosts who think they can’t do it, find any local groups on facebook, scrounge members. I didn’t get a huge response when I asked people if they were interested but once I put up the event and posted in the Beyblade Tournaments WA facebook group and reached out to Beyblade Club WA Inc. who were kind enough to post my event from their page… It took off. Just try, even if groups seem quiet, reach out about it. You’ll be surprised how many bladers there are out there - there’s a reason this stuff sells.
I guess that last point is what I hope people will take away from this. Do the quiz. Give it a shot. Reach out. Find people. Make it happen.
Wow, what a day. This is my first tournament report, it’s going to be long because I want to talk a bit about the leadup and setup of the first tournament I’ve run in a long, long time.
I rocked up at 8:30AM to secure our pavilion. Weather was quite cold for Perth, nothing like the conditions Crab hates over in Maryland (positively balmy by comparison), but the breeze was biting and we were in a fairly windy spot for us Perthians. Look, we don’t like the cold. Hadn’t been here before. Oh well. Would like to run these indoors.
Before I get into things… PLEASE check out the pictures from the event taken by Antonio, one of the parents present. They are gorgeous:
GORGEOUS PHOTOS OF PERTH BEYDAYS IN HERE
I set up a clear tournament area – the pavilion was a great spot for this whole thing layout wise with room for the parents to hang around and benches etc. I laid out a rug for free play stadiums I had bought (they kinda ended up moved everywhere by the attendees anyway, but hey). I set up a table for the stadium and levelled the uneven ground with some cardboard, checking with a spirit level, and rigged up my mic-turned-camera stand over the stadium so I could record each match clearly - I wanted to ensure that people could ask for video review or judges could double check things (especially with everyone judging, including myself, having either no experience or not having done so for a decade) and felt that if we were going to have video review everyone should have access to it every round. I provided soft drinks and water (though there are plenty left) to keep people going. I set up, did a bit of practice til I was comfortable with my attack launches while I waited to see who would show.
Leading up to this event I had put off hosting as I wasn’t sure I’d get the people. I figured I’d scrounge to make eight and worked out contingencies around that. We had 2 registered WBO members – myself and shrim. Perth is a small, small city. It’s been a decade since I’ve done stuff here. For better or for worse, there are other Beyblade orgs here who I figured the kids would like.
We ended up with 19 players including a late entry.
I was surprised. Even with 18 registered at the start of tournament day, I expected drops. No one dropped, not even LOML who literally flew in from Sydney to join us. For reference, that is not a small ways - it's a little further than LA to Atlanta. Incredible passion for the game.
With 17 registered the night before the tournament, I expected at least one no show and had thus prepared for Group Round Robin. I’d done some reading on Swiss just in case, but not as thoroughly… I had to change everything over and rework the pre-tournament announcements with a whole bunch of excited kids and adults raring to go. We got there. Thankfully, ByronI who arrived first had some experience with Challonge and pointed me through some stuff I was a bit puzzled on. The printed organiser guide I bought just in case helped.
As someone who doesn’t like public speaking and is (perhaps surprising to our members) very shy, I definitely felt a little intimidated as a first time host, but chatting to Fryd Ryce (who I had spoken to the night before) and ByronI - two fantastic people, I got my head in the game. I managed to find my loud voice and with the help of parents I had everyone listening as I ran through the specifics.
Fryd Ryce was MVP for the day – he bought briefcases full of the latest DB Beyblades and let the kids use them for free play and in the tournament. It made the kids’ days that much more special getting to play with the Beyblades they’d seen in youtube videos (and having a real chance vs those of us who had bought the big guns). The most impressive thing though, and something I think that I think really shows what Perth is like? He got them all back.
Of course, I had to face him first match of the tournament and first match of finals - I won both but man, the finals match in particular was dicey, he’s damn good. Shrim also put up a massive fight in the finals - getting me to 4-4 after we decided to finish our match the only way two Esteemed Gentlemen could - a Guilty Mirror, and Calvin Mendoza - well, I reckon if he had a good Guilty combo instead of Rage I would have been in a very bad spot. Nonetheless the practice paid off and my launch was good enough often enough to get me across the line into 1st, with Calvin Mendoza 2nd and LeviathanFish beating shrim for 3rd (shrim got outpicked, though to be fair - LeviathanFish had been using right spin stamina all day and continued to do so here).
Per the same policy I have always stuck to, I did not take the physical prize for my own tournament, and we shuffled prizes down to 2nd, 3rd and 4th - which meant everyone actually got something pretty useful to them!
In terms of what showed up combo wise, we had a lot of stock DB thanks to Fryd Ryce bringing all of his stuff, as well as a number of very solid combos - including a fairly remarkable amount of Guilty (on Quick’ and Xtreme’). For my part I leaned hard on Guilty Longinus Giga MX-0 and given I’d been practising hard this paid off really well despite my shaky hands (nerves…), only dropping one match all tournament (big shout out to
We did see some more eclectic stamina combos (e.g. Wave’) do quite well, and Mobius was more popular than Drift aside from a couple of specific players. Not a tonne of Bearing combos and they… didn’t do that great when they did show up? Greatest Raphael, Dynamite+F and Vanish saw a lot of use and Prominence relatively little, Roar a surprising amount and Astral was used primarily by LeviathanFish. It was definitely not bland, and was a lot more competitive than I honestly expected.
Oh, and Emperor Forneus[LC] Outer Cycle was OP as heck, getting our late entrant EmpForneus16 to the finals. Yeah, hard to believe I know - especially when you consider he’s barely tall enough to reach the stadium (wouldn’t let me drop it down either) but he has the spirit of a fighter and a heck of a launch, and Cycle had enough LAD to work with his opponents perhaps underestimating him to get him across the line.
In fact, the passion of all of our younger competitors was inspiring - I don’t really want to shout out individuals any more because I really just want to list all of them. Their passion for the game really made me want to just… sit down and do free play, coaching and combo building with them more than playing and judging, but I had to stay focussed. To this extent, it was wonderful to see all of our older bladers step up, spend some time with the kids and help them out - including comforting them after losses. Big shout out to the community for being so solid and supportive.
The tournament itself ran pretty smoothly. There were a couple times I had to consult the guidebooks I had printed, but for the most part it was pretty easy and thanks to the video review we had few draws. Judge’s decisions were understood as final, and parents were supportive. Honestly, a really good day especially as it was basically everyone’s first time!
There was a lot of positive feedback from parents about the event and the prospect of future events - as most players don’t use the forums much if at all, I set up a contact register so I could contact everyone and pretty much everyone signed off on it!
Some General Notes:
1. Dropped players in Swiss SUCKS: It tanks your Bucholz if you lose to the person who dropped, and this can also mean some players can end up playing only 3 matches. I understand people needing to go home early - no hard feelings at all by the way – wanna be totally clear about that, because I'm incredibly glad to have people coming to play and I totally get if you gotta run. There really needs to be a better way to handle this. IDK if that's just the nature of Swiss and unchangeable but still...
2. Cross-Brand Stuff: While other organizers were strongly opposed to the idea and said it would make things more complicated, in my experience today, a number of times it came up that people were running Hasbro drivers on TT Layers. None of the inverse (probably more of an issue for lighter formats). It would have been easier for me personally in this specific situation if I did not have to police this and we allowed it and all the new avenues that come with it. I don’t plan to really pursue this as a proposal, but… My 2c - I would have preferred it as an option.
3. No Fakes! I was dreading pointing out fakes… And no one tried to use any – this is thanks to Beyblade Club WA Inc having run community events with bans on fakes – all the kids were already across it.
4. Legalise HasPro For Accessibility Please: My launcher handle smashed through the guard of my B09 two days out from the tournament. Thankfully I had bought another on a whim recently. You know what would have been better than the stress? Being able to buy a replacement from a big box store literally across from my work place. It’s a great stadium for standard and also the most accessible for participants. Numerous parents were asking me about how to get a Burst Standard and the answer wasn’t super appealing - if we want to give kids the chance to practice in the stadiums we use to make tournaments fairer, this is a good way to go. As for DB, multiple people talked about it at the event… not in positive terms. Stamina matches aren’t so popular here, so being more forgiving to attack (which people ran a lot) would be extra nice.
5. Recording Matches Kept People Happy: I know this is a subject of debate but I did find the use of a camera resolved matters swiftly. I was able to quickly pull down my phone, play the part of the match in slow motion, and assuage any doubts about the outcome or check flash rebounds. Rebounds can be hard, but this resolved any issues with them quickly, and we managed to deal with LAD matches (thankfully not too many) despite the groans when people realised what they had to sit through. This only worked though because we all respected the judges and their calls and raised our queries with minimal arguments.
6. Single Bey Finals would be a nice option to have back: I enjoyed deck personally, but for the tournament I miss single bey finals. I know a lot of people now don’t remember The Time Before Deck, but for the entirety of MFB’s release schedule, we had Single Bey finals and I wished I had the option here today - call me old fashioned. Or just old. All the kids who made finals lost the first round thereof. I did my best to teach people about deck and run them through them but I do think it gives us “big kids” a bit much of an advantage. It’s just a bit of a learning curve for a new scene. I do like deck as a format for sure, and it worked out really well for me, but for a scene where most people don’t know what deck is until they arrive… Perhaps it would be nice to have an option for hosts, even just in newer areas, to keep things simple and affordable. Alternatively, I’d like the option to run deck first stage to have a tournament where we can basically spend the whole time teaching people deck.
7. Spin Direction Switching/Disassembly Changes: Kids really struggled to understand why they couldn’t switch spin direction on things like Lord, World and Astral, despite being allowed a disassembly mode change, and also didn’t understand being able to do the latter only once (it seemed to discourage them doing it a lot). IMO our rules would be more streamlined by allowing the manufacturer intent here, and I don’t think it would overpower the formats even with Master and Lord in GT (doesn’t really save them from being knocked out, the one place I thought of was like, Master Almight Weight Defense and it doesn’t work well enough).
8. QuadDrive Rulings Please: I was scared this would come up but thankfully it didn’t. We really need to define how we handle QD Drivers as parts (is Assault-QD+Kick the same as Assault-QD+Moment) and changing tips, what you can start with etc. It shouldn’t be that hard to get done and it is very much going to be a thing we have to look at in Classic too.
9. Attack works, but I do kinda get why people don’t use it: Guilty carried me super hard, and my launch was sufficiently consistent. However, I also practised a pretty ridiculous amount. As much as I think Guilty on Rubber is the strongest thing in the format, I don’t know if it’s advantageous enough in Deck specifically for people to want to put the type of work in that I had to - in the end if you win R1 you can basically counterpick from there on. Based on that, I do think 2 Point KO is something we should seriously look at.
10. If You Build It They Will Come: The most important takeaway though – we started with 2 people and have 19 people with everyone wanting to go again. To those hosts who think they can’t do it, find any local groups on facebook, scrounge members. I didn’t get a huge response when I asked people if they were interested but once I put up the event and posted in the Beyblade Tournaments WA facebook group and reached out to Beyblade Club WA Inc. who were kind enough to post my event from their page… It took off. Just try, even if groups seem quiet, reach out about it. You’ll be surprised how many bladers there are out there - there’s a reason this stuff sells.
I guess that last point is what I hope people will take away from this. Do the quiz. Give it a shot. Reach out. Find people. Make it happen.