(Aug. 14, 2022  10:03 PM)DeceasedCrab Wrote: The following are words I have to say about the tournament "Nightwing's Blader's Kingdom: Season 2 / Round 1 || HASBRO ONLY", a 5v5 Blader's Kingdom Format unranked tournament.

I recommend the following music for reading the report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFp7NPIYWtY . Look, I watch a lot of mediocre anime, don't judge me.

- The air conditioning situation at Nightwing's Gaming Loft is a lot better than it used to be. It was way cooler than normal. Until around 2 at least, it was downright comfortable. It got a little hotter later on, some people are bad at keeping the door closed. The lighting is now a lot less bright too, which took some getting used to, but didn't interfere with beyblade any. And there are now a ton of tables and chairs to hold the tournament in. All in all, the loft is really becoming a solid place for these tournaments and events!

- This was the first tournament of Blader's Kingdom season 2. 5v5 is interesting, and I don't miss deck format at all, but those double elimination finals brackets are just as fierce as ever.

- We had a turnout of 14 registrants for the tournament. A little low compared to other BK tournaments, and I suspect that was entirely due to this one being Hasbro only. It started the open round around 11:30, which ran for 2 hours to 1:30, and then we were all wrapped up by 3:30. Finals didn't take that long, we just had a break between the two.

- I tried to ask a lot of questions about what parts would and wouldn't be allowed ahead of time, and one question I didn't consider is would Hasbro Riptide electric drivers be allowed! The answer was yes, and I did see one in use during the tournament.

- Hasbro-only is interesting, because the weight is Crud Garbage for almost every layer! Shape is really everything. So layers and parts that were competitive as far back as God/Evolution still worked well. There were a lot of newer layers doing really well, in addition to a couple of interesting Hasbro tips. There's a lot of variety going on. A terrific amount of Quaddrive discs too, in addition to the historically successful Outer, Wheel(Hasbro), and number discs with frames.

- I ordered a Turbo Spryzen S4 for the tournament. I did not receive it in time. The seller didn't ship it until 2 days after my purchase. It is arriving tomorrow, and I am bitter at them for it. All of the most successful bladers in the tournament were running Turbo Spryzen S4 on a variety of tips, and I was stuck with Lord Spryzen, which is just like Lord except the weight is Trash; I ended up switching it out for Tact later, and Forneus when that was failing me. So I ended up running an awful lot of left spin (Spryzen and Lord and Tact and Balkesh) and honestly it worked out okay most of the time.

- The open round was 14 bladers, 8 coins each, 2 hour length. Because we had so few competitors, and a couple of them got eliminated, it was at times difficult to find a fresh opponent to face. I ended up doing one rematch against... I can't remember, I think it was Witherd57. 

- There were some WEIRD Beystadiums here today! There was the new quaddrive two tier stadium, with a hole in the middle and I didn't properly realize an out pocket at the bottom. Not a huge fan of that one. And then these was a square shaped non-tilted WWE clearplastic ring, which was... I had two matches in there and they were Wild. Just... very odd beystadium. But sometimes, I choose chaos. There were also some small plastic beystadiums which were fun. Hard to KO, but my beys did well in them.

- I generally ended up wagering one coin. Most opponents, I was willing to do 2 or 3, but they only wanted one. Folks like bladekid, JCMakeEmBurst, and anyone else I was appropriately fearful of, I insisted on one coin wagers. My strategy was to avoid being in the bottom 6; as long as I had SOME coins by the end, I would be okay. With 11 coins left and having faced everyone remaining at least once, I sorta slowed down on looking for opponents.

- Let's talk about the deck I ran: I started Beyblade in 2018 near the tail end of ChoZ, so most of my starting beys were Hasbro God/Evolution. And I've made it a point to collect most of the beys on the Limited format ban list, juuuuust in case a Hasbro only or Hypersphere tournament shows up. Balkesh B3 on 0Wall Bearing, because it's great, although in some beystadiums against some combos it didn't succeed. It didn't burst, but maybe I should modernize my pick for it. Spryzen Requiem S3 Wheel(Hasbro) Linear-H, one of the best opposite spin combos, and even quite good as same spin. This was VERY good for me, except in finals when KOs were worth 2 points. Then it became very bad for me. Garuda G3 00Cross Atomic, this did relatively excellently in same spin, and won as SURPRISING amount of opposite spin matches. Turbo Achilles A4 GigaQ(Hasbro) Octa-H, this one was GOOD. It was fine in opposite or same spin, and it did a bunch of KOs, and it's just a solid layer. Closing up my lineup I had a few options I used. I gave up on Lord pretty quickly, it's just not good. I tried Tact, but that's best in opposite spin and not great same spin, and I eventually ran out of ideas and used Forneus.

- I won Most of my matches. A couple notable losses to Mr pokee, JCMakeEmBurst (can't blame that one on the stadium, his deck is just too good as we will see), bladekid (what else is new), Godly_Requiem, maybe a few others. Wound up with 11 coins.

- There were, as far as I can tell, six complete eliminations in the first round, with bladers running out of coins entirely or coming close to it. G the master made it to 8th seed of the finals with 4 coins remaining. Following him were Mr pokee and WitherD57, with 9 or 10 coins, I can't remember which. Mike.Nightwing and I both tied at 11 coins. Past that, the big 3 collected most of the coins: JCMakeEmBurst with a reasonably consistent performance of 17 coins, and an exceptionally well done deck for this format. bladekid, who is generally quite good at Classic/GT/Hasbro (and with only very few relatively minor humility problems but let's face it, he earned those Ws, don't hate, I'm just messing with him) wound up with about 23 coins. And surprising no one, Godly_Requiem continues to tear a swathe of felled opponents to the finals, with 26 coins. He actually talked me into wagering 2 coins during our match, and of course he won that one.

- In the finals, me and Nightwing were seeded 4/5th, tied at 11 coins. Didn't really need to determine who was in what place, our first opponents were each other. He beat me in the Burst Standard stadium, I believe that one was close but I don't properly remember. Knocked down to the lower bracket, I had another match against G the master, and I did well enough to win. After which point I had to face JCMakeEmBurst again. Have I mentioned he has a really good deck for Hasbro? He does. It's quite good. He's got a Triumph in there and a bunch of the other successful layers, to include Turbo Spryzen S4, Garuda G3, and a bunch of others. Anyway, he beat me solidly, I think he swept me. That's okay, tied for 5th place with WitherD57.

- One of my critical errors was running Hypersphere drivers in the Dash stadium. Hahaha, no, don't. The KO risk is too high, and KOs were worth 2 in the finals, which made them go a lot faster. I suffered some KOs.

- The finals were quite a fight, a lot of close matches when you get to the top 4. bladekid swept the upper bracket. JCMakeEmBurst knocked out Godly_Requiem, giving him 4th place. He then knocked out Nightwing, bringing him 3rd. And when it came time to face bladekid, it was a fairly close match, but bladekid's still got it when it comes to these Hasbro and older formats, 2nd place for JC, 1st place bladekid. bladekid did exceptional the whole tournament, I'm just glad I made him really fight for his win against me, 4-5 in the open stage.

- This is an interesting format. There are a lot of different layers and discs and drivers that do work. But almost no successful attack. Some, but not much. It also works much better having a variety of parts that work. I should like to see more participants next time.

- I'm tired, and it did get a little hot in there later on. I didn't get my coffee ahead of time, I was running late, but that's not why I lost; I needed better choices of tips and layer.

This was a good tournament and I had fun. Looking forward to another Hasbro only tournament sometime.