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+---- Thread: Tournament Report: School's out for Beyblade! (/Thread-Tournament-Report-School-s-out-for-Beyblade)
Tournament Report: School's out for Beyblade! - GET_JINXED - Aug. 29, 2024
Hello hi howdy, I'm Jinx, I'm a returning MFB Veteran of the London scene.(Let's please pretend my old account doesn't exist PLEASE.) and this is my first ever tournament report.
As some of you may Know, I came all the way from Scotland to London as my travel calendar seemed to line up with the event and I decided to stuff my beyblade box in my luggage to come on down.
Going into the event, I was kinda dreading it, I previously won an unranked small Hasbro-Only but the prospect of playing into 80 people was a little yikes to say the least.
This event was a real blast from the past, I arrived at roughly 11.45-11.50 and actually ran into Lee, Blitz and HB as I rocked up with my good friend and former teammate hell kid and being able to see the other, familiar faces from the metal era was enough to really warm the heart, some of you haven't changed at all and some of you I barely recognised from that time.
Going into the event I was blown away,
I was stuck between 2 decks, I was expecting The Usual Suspects and that most of my games and matchups would see some Variation of Keel Shark, Wizard Rod, Phoenix Wing and Dran Buster and I was half tempted to just YOLO and pull out Cobalt Dragoon 5-60 DB as my 3rd Seat as some Weird destabilising LAD tech.
Statistically speaking, I know from both my own testing, game knowledge and my experience in X so far and the testimonial of other players and Content Creators is that going into a tournament, the *Safest* deck to play into the Meta is an Aggro Phoenix Wing, Wizard Rod 9-60 B and either an aggressive Dran Buster or Keel Shark, simply because it uses the least amount of prize beys and is the most easy to use as it trades favourably into *most* things in the Meta.
As a result, This was my Final deck I used for the final full leg of the tournament.
1) Phoenix Wing 3-60 Rush.
2) Wizard Rod 9-60 Ball
3) Dran Buster 1-60 Low Flat.
Yeah, I know, I know, I'm a coward; some would, and, kinda rightfully should consider as a "Helmet" list and I put that helmet on TIGHT.
The Main reason this deck worked past seeding in the finals was 3 fold.
1) My launch style.
2) The abundance of Hexa.
3) The abundance of Wizard Rod.
Let's start at the top: almost all my opponents in the finals were swearing by string launchers and I'm a ripcord purist in X.
The "Pro Winder" is not only stronger but it allows you to draw out even more power than string launchers due to its own internal mechanisms and that matters a lot.
The power and value of Rush, Ball and Low Flat scale up exponentially with the way you pull.
Now, I'm not going to post a "how to launch your beyblade" tutorial here, but, while launch strength alone is a small part of the bigger picture and only really adds incremental advantage, I would argue, it does actually matter as my own technique and power was very much the difference between me and those I bested.
The second thing is Hexa.
I faced hexa fairly regularly, either on Rod or Something else, some people really believe in Hexa, it's the little bit that could, it IS worth the hype, I think Hexa is a GREAT bit, but I think that Hexa is currently poorly utilised because the beys that would make the best defense types are either too light, or too flawed and skew toward other things, resulting in them getting bullied and stat checked by other, combinations. Especially because the heaviest bey on the market right now is a Phoenix Wing at 38.45 grams and that is EVERYWHERE. People Yearn for the days of Earth combos with WD, and I get it.
Seeding was kinda uneventful and to save time, I'm going to skip over.
Game 1 I was paired up against Abza. I won 7-0.
Abza, if memory serves was a kid using mainly Hasbro combos and a Wizard Rod and as result, it was kind of a one sided beating of very little note, this isn't to say that the kid was *bad*, just seemed like they may be inexperienced.
Game 2 was against lotoftoast, great guy, very tricky, Toast was the ONLY person I actually lost to in the Tournament and I was eager to get past him in order to get to my most hype match of the event. The likelihood of me getting a very important match to me personally was too great, I needed to beat him.
His Tyranno Beat in Particular was VERY well tuned on 9-70 Point and had I not shown I learned from my earlier mistakes, I could have had my run in the Finals very much end here.
Final Result was 7-5, I won BARELY.
This game really came down to Tempo. After a nail biter in which we traded back and forth, I was able to get a fortunate burst on his Phoenix Wing with Dran Buster and in the shuffle, We ended locked in almost a perfect stalemate with the last match being a Wizard Rod mirror with his 9-60 Hexa going against my 9-60 Ball.
Surprisingly, the mirror ended up being the most interesting match, because it came down to Hexa's ability to countersmash against Ball's ability to Stabilise and use less Stamina and his Rod ended up losing the clash and over-finishing for the 2 points I needed.
Game 3 of the finals was against my close friend, my rival and the absolute juggernaut that is thepokeblader.
I'll level with you all, this guy is possibly one of my best friends and my biggest competition. We met in math class in high-school years ago and if we did not become friends, I would not be writing this now, he's the one who told me about the WBO, talked to me about beyblade and he's like the one guy I've never beaten in bracket, like ever. It was a match literally decades in the making from my childhood.
In contrast to the rest of the tournament, this is the game I would argue that, IS in fact, *that* serious, there's serious pressure as it's our first tournament fighting each other and even if I lost after this, if I could win, it would mean the world to me.
Unlike a lot of my other matches, simply showing up with strong combos wasn't going to cut it, I had to ACTUALLY beat him using my own merits, and unfortunately, we were on virtually identical decks with him borrowing my spare Rush bit, so I was panicking, after all, How can you beat your reflection?
As I was washing my hands in the bathroom before our match, it hit me like a flash.
The way I understood things is that pokeblader, from what I saw of his games, Liked to lead with Rod and then win with Phoenix Wing into Dran Buster for the cleanup.
But by swapping my order, and putting my Aggro Phoenix Wing FIRST and making him play it into his Rod for a winning matchup in my favour and then forcing him to recover points in the following Dran Vs Phoenix or Phoenix Vs Rod games means that unless he hits a jackpot on Buster's critical hit, even if I drop points, it's still positive Tempo in my favour as it's the kind of play that makes him rethink his placement on the shuffle rock paper scissors style and forces him to make mistakes because even if the opening play is obvious, the best case scenario he can hope for is a 50/50 draw.
After that, all that was left was to execute, and Pokeblader played me down to the WIRE.
Sure, I took an early lead, but he sure as hell made me pay for it. For my early lead, I poked the blader and he immediately locked in to try to absolutely crush me for trying such a gambit, we ended up trading points fiercely, we traded each game, knock out for knock out, burst for burst, but in the end, My early lead secured it for me, My Phoenix hit a rebound from the over-zone and knocking his Phoenix Wing into the pocket, and I was absolutely elated.
The final match was up against Grimmbae, a newcomer and she was a fierce, and fiercely nervous competitor after defeating Mimii, someone who happened to be the third girl in top cut with me and Grimmbae, something that filled me a warm sense of joy, the fact that our local scene had evolved from a fairly diverse bunch of nerdy guys playing beyblade, to a diverse bunch of nerdy people playing Beyblade.
Grimmbae had borrowed my Hexa bit for the event, and seeing her use it against me on her Rod combo was a little amusing to say the least, but it was at this point, just as i walked up to get into position that the pressure started to hit. It was my second top cut for X and if I beat her, I would have not only successfully represented my local scene, but also prove that I'm not just some local wonder, but a serious contender at the biggest event in the UK scene and I almost felt paralysed from the weight of it all, after all, it's one thing to go in to an event for fun, it's another to actually have a clear shot at winning.
Game 1 was Phoenix Wing Vs Phoenix Wing, which ended in a burst finish in my favour, Game 2 was Keel Shark Vs Dran Buster into a spin finish where Shark got all the Stamina knocked out and game 3 was a Wizard Rod mirror where I gave up my first loss. I felt my grip and placement of my feet falter as I pulled, resulting in a weaker launch, a phenomenon I couldn't be sure if it was because I'm disabled and I pushed my body too long without my cane or because I was sweating so much.
Funny things can happen in a tournament, and in this case, Grimmbae and I, in an attempt to out think the other, tried to set our decks in such a way that it ended so that our attack types tried to not fight each other on favourable terms for the other, and instead, between 3 deck shuffles in total, we ended up fighting Wizard Rod Vs Wizard Rod three times. In a row. An event that has only a roughly 3% chance to occur and it happened.
The final match was at 4-4, my Dran Buster Vs her Phoenix Wing, all we had to do was get an Easy KO, and instead, the game ended with the last little bit of my Dran Buster's Stamina hitting a critical hit on her Phoenix Wing. Right. Into the Extreme Zone.
My Final Record was 8-1. With a nail biting match at the end, I won my first "Big" X event.
Overall, This was one of the best tournaments I've ever been to, don't get me wrong, the staff were absolutely overwhelmed with the sheer number of folks, even if our final turnout was 74 players of 80.
As a recently out and established transgirl, I've never felt more welcomed in a room full of people, even just to have a chat with folks, it was just great to see so many people I'd not laid eyes upon in a decade.
If I had to do it all again, I would have substituted Rod for another attack type or gotten myself sorted with a Tyranno Beat weeks before the event like I originally planned.
If this event has taught me anything, it's that Beyblade is an incredibly complex game and it's a game in which I am still a student.
Thanks for reading this big ole yap sesh!