Aug. 28, 2022 3:54 AM
The following are words I have to say about the two day 0 tournaments, unranked 1v1 HMS and P3C1 ranked Burst Classic.
I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxwPTc37G2I . Look, I play a lot of good videogames. Deal with it.
- Nightwing's game loft is relatively cooler than it was initially. Temperaturewise, it's as good as it's going to get. Unfortunately we had some 90 degree heatwaves, so things got a little toasty in there over time.
- The lighting is really starting to get to me. It is dark in there. Eventually I can see, but the phone cameras often have trouble capturing slow motion footage, because it's so dark. Also he had a system set up where it makes little green laser dots shine across the floors and walls in dancing patterns. After a few tournaments with these on, I have started to find it distracting when I am trying to judge matches.
- I am literally getting too old for this. Doubleheader tournaments have caused me a lot of stress and fatigue in the past, and multiple tournament days in one weekend as well. This event, with 6 tournaments over 3 days? It's the perfect storm. I want to attend them all, but it's VERY bad for me. I have had to miss work the day after Sunday tournaments before because of this fatigue. This weekend is no different. In the future, I am going to sternly limit myself to one tournament each weekend, maximum, and definitely a limit of 3 tournaments a month. Beyblade is literally unhealthy for me, apparently.
- Bladers, it is important to practice good hygiene before tournaments. The morning of, you need to shower. And in hot summer months, you NEED to wear deodorant. And this is very important mostly for YOU, DECEASED CRAB, YOU ARE A BIG STINKY! WEAR DEODORANT, DANGIT! I was made aware of it being a problem after last tournament, and I have been more careful about it at these tournaments, applying deodorant multiple times. I deodoranted so hard that today my deodorant stick burst, turning into useless little cubes I could not properly apply. Cool, must've had weak teeth on the deodorant, or a particularly bursty disc like Gravity. Thanks for nothing, Old Spice!!!
Day 0 HMS
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- Traffic was bad on the way in. REALLY BAD. I gave myself a lot of extra time because I knew it was Rush Hour on a Friday. A lot of other people didn't, and missed tournaments.
- We had 19 registrants, 5 round swiss. We didn't get started until around 6:30, a bad omen considering how long this was going to take and that we had another tournament to run afterwards.
- One person registered and didn't show up until round 4. Hey folks, if you're running that late, just skip the tournament and go to the next one. It's not fair to your opponents, it really does mess up the seeding of matches and affects the buchholz scores of your opponents. Don't do this.
- As a reminder, do not pick up other people's property at tournaments without permission. Never a good idea.
- This was a 1v1 format, so the decisionmaking really wasn't that complicated. I am not well versed in HMS, and I wanted to try it just to see how it was. I had a stock Dark Effigy (Zhuge Liang Three Kingdoms version, oooooh, shiny) that I ran the entire time. Not a bad bey, honestly. I went 3-2. I was also the lowest Buchholz 3-2 blader, and wound up not making finals. Oh well.
- HMS is interesting, but personally I'm not that into it. It's definitely a bridge between Plastics and MFB and it shows. The KOs are numerous, we were mostly in reproduction stadiums of an HMS original. Those walls were doing some serious work. There were a LOT of KOs, self-KOs. A couple bursts, honestly, these parts do not remain stable and functional forever. A lot of people borrowing parts had some very bursty parts that they had trouble assembling. Even I had trouble with it. You can tell TT learned a lot after HMS when it comes to assembly ease.
- I saw a couple of the pre-Bullet combo being used, Phantom something I guess it's called, some Voltaic Ape, and a few other cool beys. Honestly, I like how small and light they are, makes for some more fun gameplay. I think the size and weight of MFB and Burst beys is overkill.
- I can't give a good nuanced analysis of this format, because it was 1v1, and I don't know the format well. I would say it was fun. I wouldn't really go out of my way to run/attend another one though.
- There were some mis-entered matches. One of mine against someone who didn't even show up was entered as a loss for me. We caught it and fixed it before first stage was over, but this definitely messed with the matching in Challonge.
- Judges, it is important not to interrupt other matches going on unless you have a legitimate tournament need to do so. If you have to ask another judge to review footage, either go to them and wait until they're not busy, or call them over if they aren't busy. If you have to talk to a blader in another match, have an extremely good reason for doing so. If you have questions about parts they loaned for example, get up and go walk over to them and ask. Bladers, when you are in the middle of a match, DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM YOUR MATCH. There is never an acceptable non-emergency reason to do this. The format rules and organizers guide apparently do not strictly prohibit this, because those rules are not well written. Bladers, if someone suggests to you not to walk away from your beystadium while you are in the middle of a match, do not retort "So disqualify me!" That's... that's all kinds of not okay. No one wants to disqualify you, we all want the matches to happen fair and square.
- The tournament finished up around 8:30 or so. So it didn't take long, being a 1v1 with 19 people.
HMS is cool I guess. If you like it, enjoy it.
Day 0 Burst Classic
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- We had 20 registrants, 5 round swiss. We didn't get started until 8:30, and you just knew this was going to have negative ramifications. It didn't wrap up until around 10:30, which is kind of a testament to how efficient it went.
- A lot of people are starting to take a LOT of time to make decisions. An unacceptable amount of time. It's LATE everyone's TIRED you CANNOT spend 5-10 minutes before a single match YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN CALLED TO sitting at a table some distance away making combos. And it's the same experienced people doing this over and over and over. You have had WEEKS to come up with good combos for this tournament and you have had Plenty of Downtime to prepare your combos before the matches and there is No Acceptable Reason for you to take this long to make combos for a match you've already been called to. How are your combos not already assembled? Why are you like this??? If you're going to come to a tournament and cause delays you could have avoided, it's going to slow things down and lead to problems.
- Burst Classic always brings out a lot of different and interesting combos. Different people approach it in different ways. Sure, you'll see a couple of popular combos like Anubion A2 on QuadKick, and Chaos on HXt+', but for the most part there's enough of a variety to make things interesting.
- At the same time, the rules for Burst Classic DO NOT PROPERLY KEEP UP WITH NEW RELEASES. People just aren't keeping on eye on the balance of the format. Because Burst Classic is rarely run nowadays, staff doesn't keep up with updating the rules or the watchlist. It is essentially an abandoned format. You have new tips like Quattro' which Should be cause for concern (only one person used it), you have upcoming concerns like Revolve', you have a host of metal and dash drivers which should be addressed or kept in line with similar earlier bans, and you have a truly staggering field of Extremely Powerful spring Hasbro tips, to include a High Revolve with a very good spring. Wow!
- A year ago 8 more Hasbro Exclusive Turbo releases were permitted in Burst Classic. Since that time, the Hasbro tips have gotten reaaaally good and some of those layers have become Extremely Powerful, perhaps to an excessive degree. Back in the day, there was a big argument to permit them because "Oh, it's just Hasbro, they aren't good anyway, and we don't have access to older stuff." And if the Hasbro tips available today were present at that time, it'd never have happened, they're way huge layers for the format and now they're very powerful and don't burst. Staff honestly aren't watching the Hasbro tips closely enough, because again, this is an abandoned format and as long as you take to time to do the research, you can find some very game-breaking combos. And perhaps we're fine with that. Who knows!
- Two participants had to leave mid-tournament. I mean, the tournament was scheduled to start at 8, we started late, and the page says expect to be there for a few hours. Why would you go to an 8 PM tournament if you can't stay up late??? Well, most bladers don't read the tournament details. I know this, but it's still annoying. People who leave mid-way, especially early in the tournament, mess with the Buchholz scores for tiebreaking. Folks, if you can't reasonably guarantee that barring emergency you won't stay for the whole tournament, don't register.
- It was P3C1, a format I personally don't like. loves it though, so every tournament this weekend except HMS was P3C1. Until the finals, when everything changes to be deck format, and it's entirely different. My strategy was originally to go with 3 combos I know were good, and pick randomly from them. It worked okay. I went 4-1. I originally had Dragoon on Metal Drift, and used it once during first stage. Bad idea, the tooth doesn't destroy the layer but it's too short, you NEED Bahamut or Kerbeus rubber chips to keep that thing in line. Normal Drift better on that, honestly. There's a Hasbro equivalent someone else was using to great effect. I also used Chaos Gravity HXt+', a TERRIBLE MISTAKE! Very bursty. It won, a lot, but Gravity was a bad idea. That got turned into Knuckle later and it STILL BURST. The funniest part is when it bursts, the disc and layer fly off, but the tip keeps spinning for a VERY long time, like a headless horseman. Funny stuff. Also I ran Anubion A2 on QuadKick, which is very good all around. But there are better layers for QuadKick, oh yes there are...
- Between my random picks and intentional picks, I did well in the first stage. My only first stage loss was to, and hey, he's good, and he did a risky bursty stamina pick and it worked well.
- I got eliminated the first round of the finals. It was an interesting match. I brought a Valkyrie on Qc', Chaos on HXt+', and something else I don't remember. had a Hasbro Dragoon on a Hasbro Drift, Tyros T2 on QuadKick (I distinctly remember this layer being decent stamina and attack), and Balar on a very tight stamina driver. Balar's basically an oval shape, so very attacky. JC picked Dragoon first, as I guessed, and I picked my Valkyrie. The first battle was VERY close, looked like a double KO at first but the judge determined Dragoon went out first. From there I switched to Chaos and him to Tyros. He burst me! So it's 2-2. Same combos, unfortunately he bursts me again. Nuts. I have to try the Valkyrie, but, I self-KO. Game over! He made it as far as second place, his beys were just really good. This is a recurring pattern, he's a good blader.
- KOs need to not be 2 points in deck finals for classic. This is a recurring issue, there were a TON of KOs today. They're EVERYWHERE NOW in Classic. The finals did not take long, the points racked up really fast.
- Tournament finished at 10:30, I got home at 11:30 after cleanup and some slow, safe driving. Had to go to bed almost immediately, for another two tournaments.
Burst Classic is the wild west, an abandoned format where the rules and testing to make sure the format doesn't break just don't happen. Fun, but it really does need some attention.
The following are words I have to say about the two day 1 tournaments, ranked P3C1 MFL and unranked P3C1 MF4D.
I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TsgaVdhzTg . Look, I play a lot of good videogames. Deal with it.
- ran a lot of smaller events during the day. A "Most Beautiful Beyblade" Contest, and a "Worst Beyblade" Contest.
- I didn't submit any beys to the beauty contest, most of mine are ugly and dour and generic. There were some really cool color combos there, only a few had been painted by hand. In the end we had a tie vote between an actual cool color combo and the stock Ray Gil someone submitted. You know, because memes. So we had a vote off and the Ray Gil won, 10-8. Y'all.
- The Worst Beyblade concept is simple: Everyone makes a bad beyblade. You hand it to your opponent. You want to win with their bey to prove yours is worse. TSO decided broken or damaged parts would be allowed. And then pulled out a hammer, and started maiming his bad layer to make it worse. Others followed suit. At that point I opted not to participate. You know how I get about artificial modification. I went and got some food instead. Sure, I took a hammer to an Arkanoid DS cartridge many years ago, but I didn't do that to try and defeat other people.
Day 1 MFL
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- Weekend traffic not bad.
- We had 20 registrants, 5 round swiss. We didn't get started until around 11:30. I don't know what to tell you, other people don't start tournaments on time. That's more of a Crab thing.
- At yesterday's Classic tournament, I learned that when selecting 3 beyblades for P3C1, you don't always need to intend to potentially use them all. Sometimes you can just intend to use two of them and use the third one as an implied threat to steer people away from choosing beys you don't want to face. If you include a quality attack type in your deck, they will be less likely to run their pure stamina, even if you're unlikely to choose your attack. Also sometimes it helps to choose the attack type to mess with them.
- Before the tournament today I realized the Gravity wheel rules had changed, in December apparently (there doesn't appear to be an announcement for it). I thought this applied to Variaries too. I was wrong, it turns out. So in Limited, Gravity can't do direction switch in first stage, and can only do it once in finals matches. Apparently, there is one Hasbro version of Variaries which isn't banned (?!?!?!) and can freely switch directions every battle in first stage or finals because it isn't addressed. So... that's another hilarious loophole in WBO rules. Just ban ALL the Variaries in MFL and be done with it. If not, if you're going to have rules on direction switching layers, at least keep them consistent. I am TIRED of dealing with the poorly written rules WBO has.
- For this format I ran my usual Meteo L-Drago on F230CF, to decent effect, but I got KOed a bit. I also ran a Hasbro Duo on 230D (my CS is very unseasoned and had some good advice), Bakushin on a low track MF, and a few other reliable standbys.
- But my opponents, they were tough. did great today, did well as always, and showed up from out of nowhere to give us central atlantic bladers a serious challenge! 2-3 doesn't get me to the finals, but that's okay.
- I skipped using Gravity today, because my previous Gravity B:D chicanery was no longer useful. I saw a LOT of Gravity on attack, a lot of Lightning L-Drago on attack, just... a LOT of attack tips today in MFL. And attack did Great. SOME interesting opposite spin stamina, but attack really showed off today.
- We had a fair amount of regulars from the region make it to finals, and a fair amount of more distant bladers! Everyone did a good job in the finals, and I don't remember them too well for whatever reason! Sorry.
- The tournament finished up around 1:45. So it didn't take long. P3C1 tends not to take too long.
MFL is a decent format, but I'd like some consistency in spin direction change rules. I also like it more when it isn't P3C1.
Day 1 4D Experimental Format
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Day 1 4D Experimental Format (for real this time)
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- We had 21 registrants, 5 round swiss. We started at exactly 4:00. I was getting everyone in the building who wanted to play pre-registered over the hours between the previous tournament, I did roll call ahead of time, and the tournament was done by 6:20. Efficient. Go me!
- I was tired and feeling silly, so I adopted the monotone I used for Boring Tournament when making announcements. I was taken to task by someone for this, saying that overuse of the megaphone for non-critical information would only cause people to tune me out. As it turns out, only one person really tuned me out and it was them. Nice try, but most people enjoy my megaphone irreverence.
- I was running this tournament. I like to think it went smoothly. I had to switch matches being called a couple of times because some bladers wouldn't show up to their matches because they were busy doing literally anything else other than the Beyblade matches they came here to do.
- Calling matches is an art form. You CAN'T leave the judge matches to the end, or it takes 1000 hours. Thankfully, I had a LOT of experienced people willing to judge. When too many judges were involved in matches I'd limit it to 3 Beystadiums being run, and when I didn't, 4. Rounds went fast.
- With a fairly open ban list for this format, we ended up with a couple of patterns. Almost everybody ran a deck with Diablo, and it countered Most Everything. There were a few counters to it, not many. Everyone in the top 4 had it in their deck. This isn't really as much of a lively meta as you'd think. There are so many things banned in Limited, and we saw ALMOST NONE OF THEM in 4D format. We saw Flash, and Diablo, and Death, and Phantom. Little else. Occasional L-Drago Destroyers on F230, and a little bit of variety. But... mostly the Diablo show.
- I ran some okay combos, but I didn't make it to finals (No Diablo). I had a low Scythe RB I used as a counter, and about half the time it worked on Diablos. L-Drago Destroyer is Okay on F230CF but it gets knocked around a lot and the extra weight isn't always a help. Death on SA165EWD didn't do me much good, I needed more contact. I had a tall phantom and a flash, but, ended up not using them.
- One of the beystadiums got a literal divot in it during the tournament. We had to switch the bottom layer for the top one for that.
- One of the beystaidums was haunted. and were convinced there was a divot on it. No one else could find it. I declared it haunted, had them redo their match on another beystadium. Had other people go check it out, see if they could reproduce the divot-like issues. And they couldn't. So, it's haunted. Or they're delusional. 1 of the 2.
- There was one match I was judging in the finals that was a little close and I sort of wonder if I goofed. It was a 4-4 match, and there was a KO, but it kind of seemed like one of the bladers got a hand injury from contact with the beys right at launch. I couldn't be certain whether or not everything was okay, and he said there was a mislaunch, so we redid it, and the opposite outcome happened. I dunno, that doesn't always sit well. I wish people were just generally more clear about what did and didn't happen at any given launch, but you do the best you can.
- So what's my personal take on this format? I don't like it. It's absolutely drowning in Flash, Diablo, Phantom, Diablo, Diablo, Death, Diablo, Diablo, and Diablo. It honestly doesn't seem like a fun or interesting meta and I honestly like TSO's version of the banlist more. I don't know if I'd go to more tournaments of this banlist.
- TSO and Angry Face got real prizes for this tournament. I, being a horrendous goofball, gave people the promised insubstantial concepts and room temperature (hot from car) root beer.
That was a fun experiment. I hope you had fun! I don't want to do it again. I'm pre-tired for tomorrow. Time to sleep.
I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxwPTc37G2I . Look, I play a lot of good videogames. Deal with it.
- Nightwing's game loft is relatively cooler than it was initially. Temperaturewise, it's as good as it's going to get. Unfortunately we had some 90 degree heatwaves, so things got a little toasty in there over time.
- The lighting is really starting to get to me. It is dark in there. Eventually I can see, but the phone cameras often have trouble capturing slow motion footage, because it's so dark. Also he had a system set up where it makes little green laser dots shine across the floors and walls in dancing patterns. After a few tournaments with these on, I have started to find it distracting when I am trying to judge matches.
- I am literally getting too old for this. Doubleheader tournaments have caused me a lot of stress and fatigue in the past, and multiple tournament days in one weekend as well. This event, with 6 tournaments over 3 days? It's the perfect storm. I want to attend them all, but it's VERY bad for me. I have had to miss work the day after Sunday tournaments before because of this fatigue. This weekend is no different. In the future, I am going to sternly limit myself to one tournament each weekend, maximum, and definitely a limit of 3 tournaments a month. Beyblade is literally unhealthy for me, apparently.
- Bladers, it is important to practice good hygiene before tournaments. The morning of, you need to shower. And in hot summer months, you NEED to wear deodorant. And this is very important mostly for YOU, DECEASED CRAB, YOU ARE A BIG STINKY! WEAR DEODORANT, DANGIT! I was made aware of it being a problem after last tournament, and I have been more careful about it at these tournaments, applying deodorant multiple times. I deodoranted so hard that today my deodorant stick burst, turning into useless little cubes I could not properly apply. Cool, must've had weak teeth on the deodorant, or a particularly bursty disc like Gravity. Thanks for nothing, Old Spice!!!
Day 0 HMS
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- Traffic was bad on the way in. REALLY BAD. I gave myself a lot of extra time because I knew it was Rush Hour on a Friday. A lot of other people didn't, and missed tournaments.
- We had 19 registrants, 5 round swiss. We didn't get started until around 6:30, a bad omen considering how long this was going to take and that we had another tournament to run afterwards.
- One person registered and didn't show up until round 4. Hey folks, if you're running that late, just skip the tournament and go to the next one. It's not fair to your opponents, it really does mess up the seeding of matches and affects the buchholz scores of your opponents. Don't do this.
- As a reminder, do not pick up other people's property at tournaments without permission. Never a good idea.
- This was a 1v1 format, so the decisionmaking really wasn't that complicated. I am not well versed in HMS, and I wanted to try it just to see how it was. I had a stock Dark Effigy (Zhuge Liang Three Kingdoms version, oooooh, shiny) that I ran the entire time. Not a bad bey, honestly. I went 3-2. I was also the lowest Buchholz 3-2 blader, and wound up not making finals. Oh well.
- HMS is interesting, but personally I'm not that into it. It's definitely a bridge between Plastics and MFB and it shows. The KOs are numerous, we were mostly in reproduction stadiums of an HMS original. Those walls were doing some serious work. There were a LOT of KOs, self-KOs. A couple bursts, honestly, these parts do not remain stable and functional forever. A lot of people borrowing parts had some very bursty parts that they had trouble assembling. Even I had trouble with it. You can tell TT learned a lot after HMS when it comes to assembly ease.
- I saw a couple of the pre-Bullet combo being used, Phantom something I guess it's called, some Voltaic Ape, and a few other cool beys. Honestly, I like how small and light they are, makes for some more fun gameplay. I think the size and weight of MFB and Burst beys is overkill.
- I can't give a good nuanced analysis of this format, because it was 1v1, and I don't know the format well. I would say it was fun. I wouldn't really go out of my way to run/attend another one though.
- There were some mis-entered matches. One of mine against someone who didn't even show up was entered as a loss for me. We caught it and fixed it before first stage was over, but this definitely messed with the matching in Challonge.
- Judges, it is important not to interrupt other matches going on unless you have a legitimate tournament need to do so. If you have to ask another judge to review footage, either go to them and wait until they're not busy, or call them over if they aren't busy. If you have to talk to a blader in another match, have an extremely good reason for doing so. If you have questions about parts they loaned for example, get up and go walk over to them and ask. Bladers, when you are in the middle of a match, DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM YOUR MATCH. There is never an acceptable non-emergency reason to do this. The format rules and organizers guide apparently do not strictly prohibit this, because those rules are not well written. Bladers, if someone suggests to you not to walk away from your beystadium while you are in the middle of a match, do not retort "So disqualify me!" That's... that's all kinds of not okay. No one wants to disqualify you, we all want the matches to happen fair and square.
- The tournament finished up around 8:30 or so. So it didn't take long, being a 1v1 with 19 people.
HMS is cool I guess. If you like it, enjoy it.
Day 0 Burst Classic
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- We had 20 registrants, 5 round swiss. We didn't get started until 8:30, and you just knew this was going to have negative ramifications. It didn't wrap up until around 10:30, which is kind of a testament to how efficient it went.
- A lot of people are starting to take a LOT of time to make decisions. An unacceptable amount of time. It's LATE everyone's TIRED you CANNOT spend 5-10 minutes before a single match YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN CALLED TO sitting at a table some distance away making combos. And it's the same experienced people doing this over and over and over. You have had WEEKS to come up with good combos for this tournament and you have had Plenty of Downtime to prepare your combos before the matches and there is No Acceptable Reason for you to take this long to make combos for a match you've already been called to. How are your combos not already assembled? Why are you like this??? If you're going to come to a tournament and cause delays you could have avoided, it's going to slow things down and lead to problems.
- Burst Classic always brings out a lot of different and interesting combos. Different people approach it in different ways. Sure, you'll see a couple of popular combos like Anubion A2 on QuadKick, and Chaos on HXt+', but for the most part there's enough of a variety to make things interesting.
- At the same time, the rules for Burst Classic DO NOT PROPERLY KEEP UP WITH NEW RELEASES. People just aren't keeping on eye on the balance of the format. Because Burst Classic is rarely run nowadays, staff doesn't keep up with updating the rules or the watchlist. It is essentially an abandoned format. You have new tips like Quattro' which Should be cause for concern (only one person used it), you have upcoming concerns like Revolve', you have a host of metal and dash drivers which should be addressed or kept in line with similar earlier bans, and you have a truly staggering field of Extremely Powerful spring Hasbro tips, to include a High Revolve with a very good spring. Wow!
- A year ago 8 more Hasbro Exclusive Turbo releases were permitted in Burst Classic. Since that time, the Hasbro tips have gotten reaaaally good and some of those layers have become Extremely Powerful, perhaps to an excessive degree. Back in the day, there was a big argument to permit them because "Oh, it's just Hasbro, they aren't good anyway, and we don't have access to older stuff." And if the Hasbro tips available today were present at that time, it'd never have happened, they're way huge layers for the format and now they're very powerful and don't burst. Staff honestly aren't watching the Hasbro tips closely enough, because again, this is an abandoned format and as long as you take to time to do the research, you can find some very game-breaking combos. And perhaps we're fine with that. Who knows!
- Two participants had to leave mid-tournament. I mean, the tournament was scheduled to start at 8, we started late, and the page says expect to be there for a few hours. Why would you go to an 8 PM tournament if you can't stay up late??? Well, most bladers don't read the tournament details. I know this, but it's still annoying. People who leave mid-way, especially early in the tournament, mess with the Buchholz scores for tiebreaking. Folks, if you can't reasonably guarantee that barring emergency you won't stay for the whole tournament, don't register.
- It was P3C1, a format I personally don't like.
- Between my random picks and intentional picks, I did well in the first stage. My only first stage loss was to
- I got eliminated the first round of the finals. It was an interesting match. I brought a Valkyrie on Qc', Chaos on HXt+', and something else I don't remember.
- KOs need to not be 2 points in deck finals for classic. This is a recurring issue, there were a TON of KOs today. They're EVERYWHERE NOW in Classic. The finals did not take long, the points racked up really fast.
- Tournament finished at 10:30, I got home at 11:30 after cleanup and some slow, safe driving. Had to go to bed almost immediately, for another two tournaments.
Burst Classic is the wild west, an abandoned format where the rules and testing to make sure the format doesn't break just don't happen. Fun, but it really does need some attention.
The following are words I have to say about the two day 1 tournaments, ranked P3C1 MFL and unranked P3C1 MF4D.
I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TsgaVdhzTg . Look, I play a lot of good videogames. Deal with it.
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- I didn't submit any beys to the beauty contest, most of mine are ugly and dour and generic. There were some really cool color combos there, only a few had been painted by hand. In the end we had a tie vote between an actual cool color combo and the stock Ray Gil someone submitted. You know, because memes. So we had a vote off and the Ray Gil won, 10-8. Y'all.
- The Worst Beyblade concept is simple: Everyone makes a bad beyblade. You hand it to your opponent. You want to win with their bey to prove yours is worse. TSO decided broken or damaged parts would be allowed. And then
Day 1 MFL
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- Weekend traffic not bad.
- We had 20 registrants, 5 round swiss. We didn't get started until around 11:30. I don't know what to tell you, other people don't start tournaments on time. That's more of a Crab thing.
- At yesterday's Classic tournament, I learned that when selecting 3 beyblades for P3C1, you don't always need to intend to potentially use them all. Sometimes you can just intend to use two of them and use the third one as an implied threat to steer people away from choosing beys you don't want to face. If you include a quality attack type in your deck, they will be less likely to run their pure stamina, even if you're unlikely to choose your attack. Also sometimes it helps to choose the attack type to mess with them.
- Before the tournament today I realized the Gravity wheel rules had changed, in December apparently (there doesn't appear to be an announcement for it). I thought this applied to Variaries too. I was wrong, it turns out. So in Limited, Gravity can't do direction switch in first stage, and can only do it once in finals matches. Apparently, there is one Hasbro version of Variaries which isn't banned (?!?!?!) and can freely switch directions every battle in first stage or finals because it isn't addressed. So... that's another hilarious loophole in WBO rules. Just ban ALL the Variaries in MFL and be done with it. If not, if you're going to have rules on direction switching layers, at least keep them consistent. I am TIRED of dealing with the poorly written rules WBO has.
- For this format I ran my usual Meteo L-Drago on F230CF, to decent effect, but I got KOed a bit. I also ran a Hasbro Duo on 230D (my CS is very unseasoned and
- But my opponents, they were tough.
- I skipped using Gravity today, because my previous Gravity B:D chicanery was no longer useful. I saw a LOT of Gravity on attack, a lot of Lightning L-Drago on attack, just... a LOT of attack tips today in MFL. And attack did Great. SOME interesting opposite spin stamina, but attack really showed off today.
- We had a fair amount of regulars from the region make it to finals, and a fair amount of more distant bladers! Everyone did a good job in the finals, and I don't remember them too well for whatever reason! Sorry.
- The tournament finished up around 1:45. So it didn't take long. P3C1 tends not to take too long.
MFL is a decent format, but I'd like some consistency in spin direction change rules. I also like it more when it isn't P3C1.
Day 1 4D Experimental Format
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Day 1 4D Experimental Format (for real this time)
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- We had 21 registrants, 5 round swiss. We started at exactly 4:00. I was getting everyone in the building who wanted to play pre-registered over the hours between the previous tournament, I did roll call ahead of time, and the tournament was done by 6:20. Efficient. Go me!
- I was tired and feeling silly, so I adopted the monotone I used for Boring Tournament when making announcements. I was taken to task by someone for this, saying that overuse of the megaphone for non-critical information would only cause people to tune me out. As it turns out, only one person really tuned me out and it was them. Nice try, but most people enjoy my megaphone irreverence.
- I was running this tournament. I like to think it went smoothly. I had to switch matches being called a couple of times because some bladers wouldn't show up to their matches because they were busy doing literally anything else other than the Beyblade matches they came here to do.
- Calling matches is an art form. You CAN'T leave the judge matches to the end, or it takes 1000 hours. Thankfully, I had a LOT of experienced people willing to judge. When too many judges were involved in matches I'd limit it to 3 Beystadiums being run, and when I didn't, 4. Rounds went fast.
- With a fairly open ban list for this format, we ended up with a couple of patterns. Almost everybody ran a deck with Diablo, and it countered Most Everything. There were a few counters to it, not many. Everyone in the top 4 had it in their deck. This isn't really as much of a lively meta as you'd think. There are so many things banned in Limited, and we saw ALMOST NONE OF THEM in 4D format. We saw Flash, and Diablo, and Death, and Phantom. Little else. Occasional L-Drago Destroyers on F230, and a little bit of variety. But... mostly the Diablo show.
- I ran some okay combos, but I didn't make it to finals (No Diablo). I had a low Scythe RB I used as a counter, and about half the time it worked on Diablos. L-Drago Destroyer is Okay on F230CF but it gets knocked around a lot and the extra weight isn't always a help. Death on SA165EWD didn't do me much good, I needed more contact. I had a tall phantom and a flash, but, ended up not using them.
- One of the beystadiums got a literal divot in it during the tournament. We had to switch the bottom layer for the top one for that.
- One of the beystaidums was haunted.
- There was one match I was judging in the finals that was a little close and I sort of wonder if I goofed. It was a 4-4 match, and there was a KO, but it kind of seemed like one of the bladers got a hand injury from contact with the beys right at launch. I couldn't be certain whether or not everything was okay, and he said there was a mislaunch, so we redid it, and the opposite outcome happened. I dunno, that doesn't always sit well. I wish people were just generally more clear about what did and didn't happen at any given launch, but you do the best you can.
- So what's my personal take on this format? I don't like it. It's absolutely drowning in Flash, Diablo, Phantom, Diablo, Diablo, Death, Diablo, Diablo, and Diablo. It honestly doesn't seem like a fun or interesting meta and I honestly like TSO's version of the banlist more. I don't know if I'd go to more tournaments of this banlist.
- TSO and Angry Face got real prizes for this tournament. I, being a horrendous goofball, gave people the promised insubstantial concepts and room temperature (hot from car) root beer.
That was a fun experiment. I hope you had fun! I don't want to do it again. I'm pre-tired for tomorrow. Time to sleep.