Funny how I started my blog right when the Ranbat season ended.  For those who don’t know me in person, I live in Arizona and thus attend the Ranbats there.  I usually play under the name Tsumuji.

Results

Anyway, today was the last of the Ranbat season.  I think I had a pretty solid showing for a first timer.  My Viper definitely needs some improvement and I still need to get past several different factors outside of the game, which I’ll list later.  For now, let’s talk about this specific Ranbat.

I was fortunate enough to get Andrew to come with me today, I hope he got a good impression of the community.  We warmed up a little bit at my place beforehand, and while I had worked out all of my links and SJC FADCs, none of that really worked once we got to the venue.  This could be one of two reasons, or a combination of both: Jitters, or lag.  While it’s perfectly acceptable to believe that I was nervous and playing out of my element, I feel like I had my timing correctly while performing the SJC FADCs, or hell, even consecutive seismos.  My TV at home suffers from lag, however, and so I’m concerned that learning on my own TV is affecting my ability to execute my moves correctly, especially because of the character I use.

We started off with some casuals between me and Andrew, and eventually some other folks jumped in like Nef and Gurlin.  Josh showed up too, so Andrew got exposed to the three Chun Li players here in AZ: Ray, Nef, and Josh.  Each is pretty amazing with Chun, particularly Josh.  I’m hoping that Andrew will pick up some tips from them.  I also got to play against Reece’s new Dhalsim, which didn’t quite measure up to my Viper but he had the excuse of just picking up the dude last night.

On to the real matches.  My first one was with none other than Ray, a Chun Li player versus my Viper.  I wish I could remember the specifics of the match, but I know that I rocked the first match pretty easily.  For the second one I was able to carry some of that momentum, but it ultimately didn’t prove to be enough and he got me by a very thin margin.  The third one I got raped, because I think he had downloaded my Viper and I ran out of tricks.  Not gonna lie, it was pretty demoralizing and I can’t even think of what I could have done better besides kept my nerves under control.  I recall my hands still being really shaky while fiddling with my wallet to lend some money to Andrew.

Second match was against a Cammy player.  I absolutely suck ass at the Cammy-Viper matchup, I’ve got so little experience with that matchup that I didn’t even want to risk it.  I also hear that the matchup is greatly in Cammy’s favor anyway.  So I counterpicked right away with Ryu.  And I steamrolled him.  Focus-attacked the Spiral Arrows, Shoryuken’d the jump-ins, and Hadouken’d her to death.  Nothing fancy at all, I didn’t use my Ultra at all because he never got me past half life.  I feel bad for counterpicking since Viper’s supposed to be my perfect character, but I figured since it was the last one of the season I might as well go for broke.

Next match was against a Guile player, and the matchup is in Viper’s favor.  Nonetheless, I lost it due to what I felt were tourney nerves.  I wish I could remember the specifics of that match too, but I KNOW I got hit by another fucking wakeup Ultra.  Man, that’s annoying.  Shortly after I lost that I switched right to Ryu and beat him down with my standard shit.  I think I got an SRK FADC Ultra in there but launched it too soon, only tipping him.  He switched to El Fuerte right after, which freaked me out a bit, but I kept my cool and returned the pressure to keep him from running too much.

Last match was against yet another Guile player, who I’ve actually fought before.  A-Rodt’s a pretty cool guy, and I remember rolling through his Guile with Viper like it was nothing, but this time he actually beat me on the first go.  Didn’t help that this was right after my previous match, and A-Rodt had been watching my Guile-Viper fight.  I switched to Ryu yet again, but it didn’t work out for me this time and I lost.  Can’t remember specific details of this fight, either.  Maybe my memory’s going.

After tasting defeat, I went back to the casual station, hands still shaking and chest still hurting.  Even now, remembering the feeling I had makes my hands shake and screws up my typing.  After awhile I was able to cool down and play some matches with this new Bison player, Stefan, who I had actually met/fought at Gameworks a couple weeks ago!  I did pretty well against him, I think I only gave up one round.   I’ll probably be seeing more of him in the future.  I also played against the person who I view as the best Blanka player in AZ, Luey, and while it was my turn to get steamrolled, I feel like I learned a lot about the matchup and Luey was really cool about giving me some pointers.  Partway through our matches Zaine showed up (Zaine/Flook is pretty cool.  He’s a big guy who just got out of the service midseason.  He, I, and a guy from Tucson named Forward/Sean are the only Vipers in AZ.) and gave me some pointers on the Blanka matchup, mainly that Viper elbow (F+MP) beats electricity clean.  Then we played some more matches and it culminated into Viper vs. Viper.  I lost, but I picked up a lot of neat tricks.  Gotta see if I can work some seismo feints into my game.

So, I’ve got a bit of a laundry list to work on after another average performance today.  Outside of the game itself, I need to learn to deal with my tourney nerves.  I think I cut some years off of my life, and shaky hand syndrome really fucks with my game.  I also hate the idea of counterpicking with a high tier character, as natural as Ryu feels.  I should also play more live matches, probably at Dorion’s.

Inside of the game, I need to work on the following:

• SJC FADC.  It’s infuriating that I couldn’t pull these off on command today.  I need to practice these with a real person, I think that working closely with Andrew before moving on to Reece, Luey, and Dan will help me really work them into my game.
• Corner EX Seismo Tigerkneed TK.  I screwed up the timing way too many times today and gave away too many opportunities.
• Feints. Being able to pull the feints off at home doesn’t mean anything.  I can attribute it to lag on my own TV, but that doesn’t help the situation at all besides giving me an excuse.  I need to play more at Dorion’s so I can work on my adjustment speed to new TV’s, or at the worst, connect some composite cables and run the game at home like that every once in awhile.
• Fierce-Feint-Fierce. I think I’ve put this one off long enough.  The next tier of my game revolves around me learning to punish using this combo.  I’ll learn to combine that with SJC FADC and up my Viper game.
• j.HK xx m.BK. Not hard to execute at all, it’s just learning when to use them.  Basically, j.HK hits the front and if they block it, m.BK hits the back.  Pretty useful, but if the j.HK hits I just threw away a combo opportunity.
• Viper elbow works on Blanka! Thanks, Zaine!
• Balrog still shuts me down. I’ve got no way of practicing this besides hitting up Shane or Reece.  May have to go to SRK for PSN buddy hunting.
• Guile.  WTF? I have no idea why I lost this matchup.  I think I got arrogant and fell into tier-hype, thinking the matchup was free just because Viper has an advantage.  I lost two Viper-Guile matchups and had to…
• Fall back on Ryu…why?! I should be DONE with Ryu by now.  I feel like a scrub.  It’s funny that I still racked up some wins (and a slaughter against that Cammy player) even though I absolutely never practice with him anymore.  Is it worth busting him out in training mode again and conforming?