Mammoth Copenhagen Gathering Report

Copenhagen 2001 VF3ob Gathering
Friday 22nd - Saturday 23rd June

PLAYERS

There was a total of seven players there. Here I will describe their styles.

Phil (Shmolz) - Sweden
(Kage, Wolf, Jeffry)

I didn't get to play against Phil on Friday, but we played a LOT of matches against each other on Saturday. On Friday he started off playing Jeffry and Wolf but I can't remember too much about his styles with the big guys. The main thing I do remember is how he impressed everyone with his incredible TKoD consistency.
On saturday, Phil persisted with Wolf for a while, but then showed off his Kage, whom he then stuck with for the rest of the day (7 hours?). I was very impressed with Phil's Kage. He mixed up attack levels very well, always followed up staggers with throws, and was very consistent with TFT-knee combos (around 85%).
For the final few hours of play on Saturday, the only remaining players were myself, Phil and 'Lau'. The matches were quite intense because we kept with the same characters: I played Lion, Phil Kage, and 'Lau', er, Lau.
Phil's throws were very annoying because he would go for SE when I would try TFT escape, and vice versa. I did manage to escape quite a few TFTs but not enough. I had to resort to picking the desert stage to stop his TFT ringouts.
Phil used okizeme very well. He did the textbook u/f k g -> Kageyaiba -> swat a lot, and used b,b k g -> d k when I least expected it too. Kageyaiba was something Phil seemed to do very instinctively. As soon as the opponent was in the air, Phil did DP, swat every time (after things like MC sidekick). I told him to go for the more adventurous pkg, kickflip a couple of times but he quite rightly stuck with his sturdy DP, swat. Phil also used DP as a standard MCing attack, and was very successful in doing so. I would block his sidekick, then he would catch me with MC DP as I tried to retaliate (very annoying).

Me (Uk_kid) - England
(Lion, Akira, Shun)

Over the two days I picked all characters except Wolf, but I played Lion for about half of my games. With this being my first genuine VF3 vs session I didn't do too well, losing a lot to Jan and his sparring partner Wiqas. I thought beforehand that I would use Kage as my primary character, but I was very mediocre with him and so only used him about 4 times.
After picking Shun for the first time, everybody seemed keen for me to keep playing him, so I did for a short while, and did fairly well with him. One of my downfalls with playing Shun, however, was that I became complacent and started to show off, going into handstands and lie-down positions even though I was barely ahead. People seemed quite impressed with my Shun's drinking, and I was surprised at how easily everyone (including Jan) allowed me to pin Shun's p g throw on them. I tried to play Shun according to how I have seen him played in movies of Nelson's Shun - d/f p g -> chouwan combo, lots of drunken sweeps and mulekicks, drinking at the right times, using p,p,d k,k, etc, etc..
My Akira was severely hindered by the sticks. It sounds like a lame excuse, but it is true. Normally I use CDing a lot with Akira, but these sticks made CDing extremely difficult to do consistently - the diagonals were ROCK SOLID, so instead of doing two light taps of d/f, D/F, I had to try to slam on the diagonals. After a while I conceded that trying CDing would be pointless, so my Akira had to rely on d p before I could do shoulder ram This was a very bad thing because Phil's Kage kept doing elbow stagger on me when he saw the low punch coming. It wasn't all bad though, because this meant that players would try to stagger me when they saw my low punch, and this led to me interrupting their stagger with soulder ram DLC, which I was especially pleased to get because shoulder ram -> DLC takes off significantly more damage in ob
Other than DLC, my Akira was pretty crap to be honest, though I do remember catching Phil with SPoD -> high pounce at the very start of a match one time
My Lion was my main man though, and I did OK with him. My Lion consists of low punches -> uppercut -> f p,p -> pounce, and quite a lot of d/b k and f,f p okizeme. I did have a lot of success with u k MCing too, but overall Phil's Kage and 'Lau's Lau got the better of me more times than I did of them
My biggest streak of the event was a measly 5 with Taka (and another 5 but I can't remember who with). I actually preferred Taka in his ob form, though Jan's Wolf REALLY PISSED ME OFF with his knee -> guaranteed throw. I nearly got my revenge at one point - I was up 2-1 against Jan with Taka but Jan came back to win 3-2.

Hauke (3 0f 19) - Denmark
(Lion, Aoi)

My first game against Hauke was a great one. It was his Lion vs my Shun. He went 2-0 up in no time at all and it looked as if he was going to win a comfortable 3-0 victory. However, I concentrated on my usual Shun game, and, in particular, on racking up my DPs. I got it back to 2-2 and Shun's face in the fifth round was like a beetroot. I can;t remember much about the last round except that Hauke won by about 200 points to 199 and he wanted me to play Shun against him all the time from then on.
Hauke's Lion was quite straightforward, using the usual (i.e. cheap) moves and playing with varying degrees of success. His Aoi did better against me than his Lion did, although I thought he relied too much on her sweep in times of trouble. One thing I do remember about his Aoi is when he did her back-turned reversal on Phil's Kage as Phil went for SE -> Kageyaiba. Phil caught him out later with a back throw though, and I don't think Hauke knew that Aoi's TT d p stops all of Kage's SE followups.
One funny moment with Hauke occurred vs my Lion - as he had just risen off of the ground I caught him by a long distance f,f p, and then repeated that about another four times as he tried to get up and block it. He wasn't laughing at the time, and started cursing his reversal attempts

Thomas - Denmark
(Kage)

Thomas' Kage didn't look too great to me when watching him against the others, but he did well against them, catching them out with waaaay too many long distance run-in slides. I can only remember playing him once - my Shun vs his Kage. He kept trying the risky slide and I could see it coming from a mile away. I won 3-0 and was pleased with how my Shun was playing at that stage. Again, he could have benefited greatly from doing more throw escaping - I don't think he managed to escape my Shun's p g throw once.
Thomas had to leave after not so long, and so I can't think of much else to say about him. His TFT combos could certainly be improved though. He did either TFT -> b k g -> kickflip, or TFT - b k g -> b,b p, TT p, p, p, k (or similar).

'Lau' - Japan/Sweden
(Lau)

I do not know the name of this guy, but he certainly had my number with his Lau. He didn't play any other character all weekend, and I kept joking that he should play as Jeffry so that I can beat him more.
At fist I didn't seem too troubled by him. I even beat him pretty comfortably with Taka a few times. However, he told me that his Lau gets a lot of VF2 practice against other decent players, and it showed. In my opinion, it is ridiculous how quickly some of Lau's moves recover in ob. His f,d k was much quicker than what I am used to to recover, and his palm attacks were relentless at times.
'Lau' played like how a good Tekken player should play: using the first couple of parts of canned combos and then immediately continuing into another one, making it seem like he could do about 20 punch and palm attacks with hardly any recover time to make up for.
One weakness he did have was that he would do d/f k, f p, b,f p slightly too much, and I used this to land quite a few of Lion's FC throws. One nice touch he did after that combo, though, was an OTB crescent, which I hadn't seen before.
It was frustrating playing this guy because he would always use throws at the right times. He would do p -> dash b,f p g or b p g more times than I can remember, an he always followed up his big throws with the VERY annoying d/f k stomp.

Jan (Gnug315) - Denmark
(Wolf, Pai, Akira)

Being used to playing the likes of Ryan Heart, Jan was definitely the best player there by a considerable margin. Jan's best characters were Pai and Wolf. His style was very different to what I was expecting. He did not crouch dash ONCE. He is extremely direct and mixed up his play very well; better than any player I have seen.
Against his Pai I did very badly, owing partly to the fact that I was extremely vulnerable after being staggered, which he seemed to do a LOT of, with sidekick. He was not wrong when he told me beforehand that he loves inashi. He would stop any punch rush in its tracks dead with it, and followup with something damaging, such as Pai's stumble throw. Jan's juggling made me feel like I was in the land of Tekken 3 all over again. It was insane. He would do stuff like MC k -> k -> f k g cartwheel -> pounce and seemed to never fail to hit me with at least one u/f k just before I hit the ground. He didn't use the u/f k ura as much as I was expecting him to, but I guess he didn't need to use it that much because he could win easily anyway.
Jan's Wolf was evil. Wolf's short shoulder looks quite different in ob, and Jan seemed to catch me with it when I was very close to the ground (on my way down), which was irritating to say the least. I kept calling him cheap because he would do guaranteed throw after MC low kick crap, and I only escaped one Giant Swing all day.
Jan's Wolf had an amazing array of air combos - after short shoulder I would never land on the ground without being hit by at least 3 more hits. He did many variations of short shoulder, knee, punch, low punch, always choosing the right combination it seemed. THE most annoying thing about Jan's Wolf (besides the cheapass MC low kick -> throw) was the amount of pickups he landed on everyone.
The only bad thing about Jan's Wolf was that he did Wolf's p g suplex too much. I remember Phil's kage missing a kickflip and landing at Jan's Wolf's feet and instead of doing Giant Swing or the Armbar throw, Jan merely did Wolf's p g throw. I remember landing Akira's close-in bodycheck on him for about 75 points after escaping that throw shame on him.
It is shameful to admit, but Jan's Wolf managed a 65 streak on the Saturday, including about 20 in a row against my Jacky when everyone else went for some food. Again I had to resort to picking the desert stage, but it did no good whatsoever. Jan was eventually beaten by 'Lau'.
Jan's Akira certainly had a style of its own. It was an Akira with absolutely NO crouch dashing or DLC or SPoD, yet Jan still did very well with him, and I was impressed with the stuff he came up with in place of DLC. Looking back I can't even remember Jan using many throws with Akira either, so it is amazing how he managed to still do well with him.

Wiqas (AKA Mightybutt) - Denmark
(Akira, Pai, Jeffry)

Wiqas only played on Friday, and because I was only at the arcade for about 3-4 hours that day, I don't remember too much about his VF style. Like Jan, his Akira was different to what I was expecting. A lot of my matches with his Akira were fairly close, but I kept falling for stance break -> SJK -> deep bodycheck. Wiqas could only manage DLC about half the time (though he was fooling around sometimes), but did more deep bodychecks than I care to remember.
As a person Wiqas is very entertaining, and kept commentating on the matches, shouting 'OH, the EXECUTION!!' every time I would DLC or Phil would TKoD or whatever. He always kept calling Jan cheap too - all part of his efforts to let everyone else think they stood a chance against 'so cheap' Jan
I don't remember much about Wiqas's other characters; I do recall his Jeffry was great to watch though.
Overall, Wiqas lost more to everyone else than Jan did, but he seems to play for fun rather than purely to win, so I don't think I should get too cocky just yet. And Wiqas was certainly the only guy who could go (virtually) evens with Jan.



ARCADE/OB DIFFERENCES

I am used to PAL Dreamcast VF3tb - the fastest VF3 there is - and so switching to arcade ob (C or D, not sure which - the character names were blue) was quite a change. At first I thought I preferred the arcade sticks, but I don't. They are as good at DLC and SPoD and couwans and stuff like that, but my movement was severely hindered by them (excuses again I know). Normally I would never miss SJK after stance/guard break but dashing-in seemed harder, as if I had to press on the direction much more forcefully. CD'ing was a nightmare, so I will shut up about that right now, but needless to say that I couldn't get Lion's FC throw nearly as much as I would have liked.
Graphically, arcade VF3 makes the DC version look dull and lifeless. The desert stage is a joke on the DC, and the lighting on the cave stage on the arcade version blew me away Aoi's pants also looked infinitely more fluid too, but I will leave the graphical differences there because you all know them anyway. Just to say that the arcade is leagues ahead in that department. Leagues.
Overall I liked OB. I like how Taka's b k heeldrop does more damage, and how his grabs seemed more effective (b,f p g etc). I also liked how everything seemed more fun and attack based, rather than TBs ultra strong emphasis on balance. Aoi's p,p,p,k combo took me by surprise at how quickly it recovered, as did Lau's f,d k, but I thought it seemed better that way. Aoi in TB seems much weaker than in OB to me.
I can't really comment on TFT-knee difficulty because I hardly picked Kage at all and because I couldn't CD on those sticks (did I mention that before? ). Phil, who was doing TFT-knee very consistently, told me it was harder than on DC though, so I guess it's true.
The arcade game is indeed FAR slower than the DC version, especially the PAL version, and I must say that I prefer the arcade game's pace. DLC was like childsplay because it felt like I had about ten minutes in which to enter the commands. I prefer playing as Shun in DC version though. His drinking (d p k g) seemed very slow and I had to just take one drink where I would normally have risked taking two. Also, Shun's DPs were not displayed (obviously) which was slightly worse but not a big deal really. His chouwan combos were a breeze at arcade pace. Normally I have to input everything so quickly, but here it seemed like I had for ever to do chouwan-backfist and chouwan -> D/F p, p k etc..



THANKS

To all the players there.

 

low turnaround punch stops all of Kage's followups after the SE? I had no idea. Thanks for the tip.

 

Yeh, no probs. Remember that it only applies to Aoi though.
Nice meeting you by the way. I had no idea '3 of 19' was you until just before writing my report.

 

wrong...

Aoi's TT d+P only stops df+K+G from hitting, because of inverted kickflip's long execution time. If you go for either DP, uf+K etc. (any fast hitting move), Aoi will get MCed!

 

Re: wrong...

my mistake. Her TT d+p still stands as a useful move to use in that situation though, Hauke, so I guess it is still useful to know that it stops d/f+k+g after SE

 

Lau.VF

 

hi 'lau'
i didn't know you checked here. it was really nice meeting you. next time my taka will be even stronger, and will destroy your lau hhhhahhhahaha