NYG3 report

K so I had a really excellent time, now that the boring part is out of the way:

The Big Controversy

There was a lot of fucking around, then a set of seeding matches, and a tournament. Everything went smooth until the second or third match of the tournament. At that point jedi-fei said "hey, does it seem slow to anyone else? It's running slow." The theory is that the game was slowed a hair because the PS2 was being piped into the DVD-R, then from there to the projector.

Just to make something clear, fei wasn't being a troll or acting dumb, he was making an observation, it was just his opinion. But the comment planted a seed of doubt into several people's heads, and as a result people started cropping up left and right saying "waaah it seemed a frame or two slow". The support for this is supposed to be the fact that good players blew some pretty simple (and not to simple) stuff at random moments during their matches. Blondie missed 2 or 3 iai cancels, I think it was shou? who whiffed a DLC completely after a float, and adam's normally rock-solid lion blew a b,f+K+G after the FC throw... the b,f+K+G must be buffered to hit, the move won't hit if it's late, but at the same time buffering a move is generally pretty easy, the window to enter b,f+K+G before lion recovers isn't tiny or anything. So it was definitely weird for ad to blow that move.
To all this I've got two words: tournament nerves... the speed felt fine to me, tho I'm not at the elite level where I need frame-exact inputs or else my plans go down the crapper. For the "it was slow" list I think we have andy, blondie, hiro(?), jedi fei, and I think that's it. The rest seemed to feel it was normal. My knowledge of electronics is limited, but it seems like piping the game through the DVD-R is no different from adding a few extra feet of cord to the PS2's A/V jacks.

So what was done about it? Well the plan was to have double elimination, and the winner's bracket was to be played out, then the loser's, then the finals. But after the winner's bracket, everyone was still bitching about the slowness thing. Add to that the fact that the tournament started at like, 11 at night. I'd had the impression it was to be seeding matches on sat and tournament on sunday, but I guess a lot of people were bailing early sunday. So anyway, between the possible taint on the gameplay, and the fact people were tired, and also the fact that over half the people in the room were expected to watch the tournament when they really wanted to be playing... everyone agreed to say fuck it, blondie was the winner, and we immediately turned on the other 3 PS2's to play for fun. I dunno whether blonde one can say "I've won a 30 man VF tournament" to people, but he beat some REALLY good players in a pressure situation, and it was no fluke.
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People: I'm shitty with names, and attaching faces to them, etc. Forgive any lame errors. I'll describe random people I can remember and also say what they look like. Not for any reason other than I know I'm always curious and I think other people are too (but don't have the nerve to ask about it).

CreeD: is 6 feet, medium-large, dk brown hair and bushy goatee, generally with stubble and dressed like a scrub. Did I mention GQ handsome?
I didn't get raped quite as hard as I was expecting, I finished 55% for seeding matches and probably 60ish percent overall. I was the lamer who didn't bring a card, and I'm glad nobody made a big deal. I'm fine with "60ish" as an estimate. In fact I'm thrilled to do that well for a guy who's played VF4 maybe a total of 50 or 70 hours. My highlights, gameplay-wise, were handing IMF one of his 2 losses in the seeding matches (the other was hiro) and also barely edging out crewny's lau with my own, using an elbow that looked about 2 frames ahead of whatever he tried to kill me with. I have to be fair and say that imf, in my second seeding match with him, whomped me. And that in fucking around play, crew's lau got a few off of me and his lei fei just raped my jacky. Everyone's still trying to convince me the low kick of doom is fair /versus/images/icons/smirk.gif. Anyway, if I were to objectively rate myself with no false modesty and no BS credit, I'd say my only real skill at VF is guessing right and making other people guess wrong. My technical skills... struggling out of staggers, getting out of pounces, breaking throws, dodging, etc... all suck goat balls. But I can keep someone zoned in shitty guessing games for 20 seconds straight and manage to get a nice lifebar lead on them. I usually waste almost all of that lead before I finally do the low kick or P+G throw I need to finish the round. I also have a sense of frames and advantage (observed Andy) and that's pretty key in VF, but I still fall into lame patterns like elbow-palming repeatedly.

Hiro: is a broad shouldered, somewhat big asian guy with a very round head. I guess the best comparison I can come up with is a young sammo hung, but not that big.
Hiro is one of those guys who radiates this aura of confidence. He's quiet in a friendly way, a gracious winner and loser, and never seems concerned too much about what's happening on the screen. He got me 3-1 with a secondary character (jacky) and later the same way with wolf. Hiro pulls off unreal bits of highly entertaining yomi and planned sequences. In one match vs. IMF he got catch-push-b+P..pickup near the wall... and the average wolf might try another b+P or something, but the wall stumble happened early in the push's animation and I dunno if a b+P would have hit. Hiro didn't fuck with it, he opted to catch again, then did a wily d+PG. More impressive was a 100% thought out low punch MC (vs. another low punch) into wolf's bridge bomb throw. The 2 inputs needed for the bridge bomb make this just a hair more impressive to me, and it's also a practical and damaging punishment to a predicted low punch. Hiro gave me the impression of being a cut above everyone, or maybe that's just the aura you get when you've played in japan. Even if you win a round or two, you have that unsettling feeling that he's toying with you.

Blonde_One: I wanna call him a 'good looking kid' even though he's not much younger than me, he just looks a bit younger than he is (I think). He's barely blonde, closer to light brown. There's a pic floating around on yahoo somewhere.
I gotta say this guy is like 150% cooler irl than he is on VFDC/IRC. I don't mean that in a bad way at all, if anyone reads it wrong. In person he's relatively quiet and seems thoughtful about the game. Maybe he was a little wary, I dunno. ANYway, his jacky is fearsome, he moves well and has a good idea of frame advantage. He's especially good at spacing... so he doesn't eat low punches while he's executing an elbow or allow a beatknuckle combo to be stuffed. Nothing he did will make you say "OMG" if you read it on paper, but he has certain tricks and flowcharts that work great... for example he'd do elbow (but no backfist, because he's not a scrub who f+P,P's every time, unlike me) ... then he'd crouch dash back and whip out a P+K,P,K ... it seemed like 90% of the time it'd catch the opponent doing something... either they expected the backfist and low punched, or they tried to catch him with a knee or whatever. I'm not much of a jacky player, but if I had to assign him a weakness, I'd say he does PPb+PK way too much. For some reason it keeps catch people, they figure he's gonna stop and mix in PPelbow or PPknee maybe, and he doesn't. So they block it and allow themselves to be pushed back to the edge of the ring or into a wall. He also has a brain and breaks throws, shakes out of staggers reasonably well, and makes good use of the autoinashi.

IMF: Continuing the description of team FLA. IMF is the quietest of the bunch, and smiles from time to time but seems serious. He looks like a guy you'd find engrossed in the library. He's thin, wears glasses, has short and curly black hair, and I could swear he was wearing a sweater or navy sweatshirt or something, which is just hardcore. I was surprised that he wasn't asian.
Anyway, claims that he's the best akira in the usa may be valid. He's stronger than any of the other akiras I'd seen there, but to be fair I didn't see adam bust out his akira at all. I'd guess that adam is better from a defensive standpoint, just because adam's defense is just that top-notch. From a technical standpoint imf lacks *nothing* ... I watched him play for a while and he managed some wins vs. hiro, and also a little bit earlier vs. other FLA people and hyun. He's forsaken regular dashing completely and always is moving in a crouch, he does lots of viaglau step with the db,G,db,G etc. As for all the standard akira bullshit, he's got it down - 100% spod and DLC, 90% knee, and if he fucked up a m-dbpm in any combos I never saw it. He also adapts quickly (several people were commenting on this) and changes his play from person to person. For example vs hiro he was very safe, lots of DE/SDE safe poking and maybe some e-te-g after.
Generally I'd say IMF is pretty determined (he's already pretty damn good and appparently hadn't played VF before 4) and someone said he practices stuff like e-dte-g for hours in PS2 training mode. I believe it.

jedi_fei: I was expecting this nerdy white kid because jedi makes me think star wars fan which makes me think nerdy white kid. But fei's like sal, big and dominican-looking. Like, really big.
Personality wise he's cooler irl than online, but he's still sort of a loudmouth /versus/images/icons/blush.gif ...but it's in a likable and friendly way, not in a fucking-with-you way. His play is decent, I watched him and omaha fuck around playing jeffry for a while, and he's got some decent tricks. His 'big moment that sticks in my mind' is unfortunately starting all the "it's slow!" shit that ended up killing the tournament. But other people agreed to the slowness and they made the decision to stop it, so nobody should really hold that against him. Wish I could post more on his gameplay but didn't see much of it.

Ghostdoggg: Is a friendly black dude with extra short hair and a few days of stubble. He looks like... 18.. but has these little gray hairs in his beard growth, and so it makes you wonder if he's not secretly a really young-looking 40. I'm grouping him with the fla crew but he wants to be sure people know he's representing Jacksonville and not like, the Orlando bitches /versus/images/icons/laugh.gif -Ghost's aoi has great flowcharts like PPelbowP-cancel into either low punch-throw, throw only, or b,df+P crumple. You could tell that he hasn't been super serious about VF before VF4 though because there are some basics he's missing out on. Like he'll struggle out of elbow/sidekick staggers but not escape throws or block non-guaranteed canned combos. He's pretty much got offensive options down and needs to work on defense, like me.

Adam: aka adnan, is I'm guessing of eastern indian descent. He's short, dark, and handsome, wears glasses, and has short, straight hair. His most noticeable trait is ... his shirts. He wears a blue superman shirt one day, which is aight, then the next day he wears The Official Lion Rafale VF3 1P costume Shirt. I want to say it's fruity, but the shirt fits him and it wowed those of us in the room who remember that ancient VF3 game. I say "fits him" in a nonliteral sense, the dude's not very big.
Gameplay-wise adam is famous for his safe, unpunishable, defensive play. I didn't get to play him but I watched him a lot, and it was hard not to - the dude went like 84% over 200 games with Lion, and that was playing strong players. His hands are in constant motion and everything that is blocked is followed with E-DTE-G or at least ETEG. Lion is well suited to his style because lion's attacks seem to always leave you too far away, or in the wrong stance to throw, etc. When he knows the opponent will be forced to block it, he pokes and then crouch dashes backwards to avoid strikes/throws. Sometimes, he backdashes which doubles as buffering a b,b+K,P+K combo. He's also very strong at punishing tech rolls. When someone came to hiro for advice on how to deal with adam, his first words were "Don't roll." Adam will make you weep from eating lion's d+KG sweep over and over, and mix up elbow-poke or something else just when you're finally convinced to crouch. What's worse, he has that peculiar talent of spotting whether or not people have TR'd and immediately landing a ground attack or pounce. The ground attack after the sweep puts it just barely into the range of significant damage/irritation. Watching him is like watching chibita, but with less fucking around (i.e. if he does b,b+K and it fails to hit, you can be sure he won't try a TT K.. rather he'll u+P+K or hop away to safety). Beyond that there isn't much to say except he's awesome at comebacks and doesn't choke much. I wish we'd played.
I also want to mention before I move on to the andy section that adam's an extremely cool and gracious host, easy to get along with and talk to. His lodging/playing arrangements were kickass. The playing arrangements were super-convenient, you just woke up in the hotel room and wandered next door to find games going on 4 screens with everything you need for tables/chairs/controls. Food, drinks, etc were easy to grab and nothing cut into the VF time. You couldn't ask for a smoother setup.

Crewnyc: Andy positively towers over people, esp. for an asian dude. I'd put him at 6'3. He's thin, dresses conservatively, and has fiery red hair.
I got to play his Lau and Shun-Di. His lau was like 90% over 100 matches the first day I came in - lau's his best character no matter what claims he might like to make about his shun (who's like 72%?). Andy's lau's trademark has become the low kick cancel guessing game. He generally goes for elbow staggers afterwards, and if the opponent shows that they're too smart/dumb to fall for that, he nails you with a b,f+PG throw. He also fuzzy guards like a bastard, escapes throws intelligently, and tries damned hard to do E-TE if an opponent proves capable at forcing a 50/50 situation on him. Otherwise he's particularly fond of E-mupknPPP - which is good safe damage, tho he could opt for the viaglau-style m-upkn-spkn combo. When he loses initiative, he relies on his fuzzy skills to block the next attack or force a whiffed throw, then regains control with d+P-b,f+PG. Overall crew is strong, but maybe has a tendency to underestimate people or else get down on some small failure and in turn be out of the zone for the rest of the match. The underestimate part comes from his matches with me - his lau should have toasted me but he probably had a 9-6 edge over roughly 15 matches, and one or two of the six were in the seedings, which visibly annoyed him. I should be clear that I'm not going out of my way to say this because I think I'm better than he is, but because I'm just pleased to have managed wins vs. a visibly stronger player who has a 90% win rate. I chalk it up to not playing vs. lau much. His lei fei is a four move motherfucker who dances around a lot and swamped my jacky. I adapt slowly and I fear that vs. The Low Kick Stagger of Despair and Destruction (LKSoDnD) I'll be eating it for the rest of my life.
PS: crew has black hair of course, and is also every bit as gracious a host. I came into town wanting to be annoyed with him (we got a mixup on the directions and I ended up in manhattan rather, which cost me 4 hours and 20 bucks).. but we cleared up the miscommunication and I found he's impossible not to like. He also arranged for those big group meals which make these gatherings fun and worked really hard at making this gathering ideal. Most people assume a gathering is finding a room, a few TV's and PS2's, and call it good. But he helped set up an out-of-the-way playing area, bought a kickass projector setup and the DVD recorder, and helped arrange TVs and PS2s and speakers so that everything was as convenient as possible. He also handled interviews and generally kept things moving by making people aware of what was going on. I've heard a few people give andy flak IRL and online about the gatherings, but I think he did a great job. I expect the DVD to be a nice piece of work.

LLanfair: aka 0wen-ed. If you heard llanfair's nick and didn't know where it came from, you might think the name was straight out of ADnD, and that llanfair was an artsy-fartsy merry-fairy longhaired hippie type. Or maybe that mental image was strictly my own. Llanfair however is actually a fit GQ model type with a big jaw and straight teeth and wireframe glasses. His hair is dyed blonde, as are 1.5 of his eyebrows, which gives him a decidedly nordic look.
LLan does all the stylish setups and leet yomi tricks we all wish we could do. I want my pai to look like his, except... except... I'm also fond of winning. To be maybe-too-frank, llan's pai didn't do half as well as I expected, and hovered between 30 and 40 percent, tho he may have been higher by the end of the gathering. He thinks waaay too hard and doesn't take the simple route to anything. If he wins, the opponent looks utterly owned. If he loses, people shake their head and say "dag he looked good but..."
I have a lot of mental highlights from the llanfair reel. I sat and watched him do his damnedest to play pai with style vs. adam's nasty and efficient lion, and even though he was on a losting streak llan still went for some wonderful stuff. I saw ad's lion try df+P+G into df+P,P.. and llanfair had the technical knowhow to do the right thing: take the first hit and turn around... but then he inashi'd the second punch. It was truly rad. Following this he dashed in, did a single P, then a DDT. Still, as cool and brainy as that sounds, I also remember llan doing something like mid inashi - P - ST - crouch dash - another ST - then eat a K,K, pounce when he finally went for a chunk of damage with pai's FC throw. The tendency to set up and then successfully execute really cute, fancy sequences overrides his will to win. I don't care if I K,K pounce my way to victory. Still, I don't mean to sound critical, he's one of the smartest and trickiest players I know. His wolf is slick and lands low punch cuts and unexpected low throws, and his akira is fully spod/dlc/mdbpm capable and has some great baits/tricks. Llany plays with gigantic nuts and if I had to make a movie of only one player from the gathering, he'd be it.

Jesus is this thing longwinded. I enjoy writing it probably a lot more than anyone will like reading it. Still, I intend to give the gathering the full treatment, so for now this will be Part 1. The 2nd and probably-final part will come tomorrow, but for now I must sleep.

 

Nice report CreeD! Glad to see that the gathering was fun.

It's too bad Llan didn't own up wit his Pai, I was so hoping that he would do very well with her. He deserves all the props he gets for his playing style.

it's too bad he didn't bust out his towel dance either. /versus/images/icons/wink.gif

 

yesh blondie is so sexy ooo la la.

 

Will we be seeing a summary of the matchups (everyone's win/loss record, who they beat, etc.)? Is Crewnyc going to show the results on the nyg3 site or maybe in a post here? It would be much appreciated. I'm such a VF geek.

 

Good on ya Chris. I wish I could have been there to see it.

 

Llan actually used the towel dance to advance to the final sixteen. We were all badly frightened.

Seriously though, speaking of llan, if anyone can post the win percentages and all of that, it'll be him. Off the top of my head the top guys were hiro, imf, adam, and blondie (for seeding win percentage). Blonde one was the highest rank at second dan, best win percentage overall I think must be andy's lau at 90%. Adam's lion was 84 last I saw, didn't catch hiro's wolf's percentage but it was 80-something and it was the wolf he uses outside of nyg3, so it had hundreds of games.

 

Hey CreeD, Blonde One was actually at 3rd dan by the time I left. Most otherwise your recollections are pretty accurate. Hiro was the exception to the mem card rule, and he used his previous characters, those had thousands of wins hehe. /versus/images/icons/laugh.gif

 

Ok, to continue with player profiles:

Shang: Is your basic akira wannabe, with a sort of black spiked/flattop hair arrangement, and round glasses. He's not half as beefy as akira and (unlike akira) has a girlfriend. This caused him to lose a day of play (doh) but I got a few games against him.
Shang's akira is technically capable and he's more fond of R-TE or R-DTE than the various e-dteg strategies. It's less safe but much cooler, shang seems to land a bunch of reversals this way. In terms of combo ability and all the usual akira BS, shang is pretty capable. He doesn't hunker around with fancy stepping, but he does pull off knees and mdbpms and DLC's in combat regularly. He's become fond of the AS3. Comments about his play focused on how he dumped his old style (which was more machi) in favor of a new aggressive style involving lots of double palms out of nowhere. Shang's also got a pet aoi and I remember her mostly for the aoi standards: f+PK,P and the aiki throw.

Andrew: Andrew's a good looking sorta pale-brown guy, he speaks fluent spanish so I dunno where I'd place him. Half black half something? He wears a little bit of growth around the mouth and chin and usually has a little stubble besides, which makes him look like a pimp. Occasionally he'll frighten people in the conservative areas of long island by putting on his thug cap, which is a black wool ski thingy. I've got a pic of him, but I wouldn't post it without permission -_- ...
Andrew plays a good jacky and wanted to be The Owning Jacky at the tournament. Unfortunately, blonde one took that role. In the matches I watched andrew did okay, but lost a lot of close ones with 2 rounds under his belt. I'm told that later on he adapted and started winning more, and I'd guess that if blondie and andrew were to go 100 rounds that andrew'd pull off 40 of them. Andrew's jacky is insanely fond of lightning kicks, he does one, or two, or three, sometimes 4, and you never know how many until it's too late. The retarded things beat out low and sometimes high punches. Statistically (sez rodney) ppl should be able to toss him after three, but the problem is that andrew's not always gonna do three, and besides that you need to react right away. If you're worried about a fourth you might not have the reflexes and eat a kickflip (or if he senses you want a throw, a knee-pp-knee). One thing I think andrew is missing is max damage combos - he always goes for knee PP knee and only occasionally knee, PP, puntkick. A puntkick is a good ender, by itself it'll do about the same damage as PPknee thanks to damage scaling. But blonde_one used the absolute max damage combos like knee, PP, f+P+K, ground kick. Aside from all that, andrew's got decent defensive skills and struggles correctly, if he nailed people for more damage and abused the crap out of PK,P,K he'd be really nasty.

Hyun: Hyun's one of the only azn guys I know with really wavy hair. He's fond of the shirt-over-another-shirt look, I dunno what you'd call it. Blending a tee shirt and a flannel shirt looks very usa.
Hyun used to focus on Kage but has fallen in love with jeffry and does quite well with him. He probably plays better than I do, but not consistently. His jeffry is VERY good at low punch-XPD and that's probably 2/3rds of his damage. He's also got great struggling ability and tries to work in DTE's and EDTE's when he loses initiative. Hyun's weakness is that he falls into patterns, i.e. he approaches with dashing elbow, and then rather than mix in DE-U with DE-throw or DE-low punch, he almost always does a delayed uppercut. That could have been just vs. me though. He also settles for knee, d+P, ff+PP combos when he could have gotten like 40 more points with something else. But I've got a lot of respect for his brains and ability to bust out something very intelligent without warning. Sometimes it's a surprise low throw, sometimes he SE's you out of the ring (he killed me with that in seeding match play more than once) and sometimes he breaks a throw that others might not have. I only saw a little of hyun's kage, and unfortunately that was vs. adam's lion, and it was just tough. I think he was nervous, as he tried for the smart max damage stuff like TFT, knee, elbow, kickflip, but would blow the kickflip. Or maybe it was the stick. My mental highlight of hyun comes from soon after my arrival: we'd been watching imf show off his dexterity and evilness, and hyun picked jeffry, and I figured that between imf's movement and akira's natural speed advantage that hyun would be slaughtered. Instead the rounds for one game were tight, entertaining, and had like three back to back ring outs. Hyun got imf with an RO for the win, and I was impressed (tho I dunno if IMF was /versus/images/icons/laugh.gif)

Rodney/Omaha: If you've ever played punchout for the SNES, rodney looks sorta like bob charley. He's a thin black dude with loose dreads. He'd not big, but he'd be kinda scary looking except he grins a lot and is ultra, ultra friendly and talkative. He's a wicked cool guy and doesn't hold back when he talks to you.
I saw a little of his jeff and a little of his sarah. Word has it that once upon a time he was super careful and machi and would literally sit back for 20 seconds and wait for you. Those days are done, he plays to (in his words) get into flamingo stance and stay there the whole round. Without the ability to block, duck, backdash, etc... he's got no choice but to be in your face, and he is. He swamped my lau in my first match of the tournament, and what's sad is I can't claim to be unfamiliar with sarah, I had to deal with a bit of flamingo bs playing shadowdean. However rodney's a cut above any sarah I've played, and anyone who watches the DVD will see me drop the soap against him. He landed the 270 on me /versus/images/icons/frown.gif /versus/images/icons/smile.gif ... that's not a weird or rare thing for him, but I was pretty disappointed at how tournament nerves made me fall back on retarded strats like elbowpalm x 42. Rod's jeffry has some cool tricks, he showed me and jedi fei a great bait: b,f+KG with jeff (whiff from mid range), then d+P-throw. He landed a lot of backbreakers this way, it works like a charm. Even if he tells you about it you might eat it. I suggested he try a combo that GLC originally thought up: threat stance throw -> d+KG crumple -> b,df+P,P. The second punch whiffs vs. jeff but might not vs. lighties. In any case it's stylish. Did I mention rod lands jeff's hit throw like no tomorrow? He's got a lot of setups for it. I really got a kick out of seeing him play. Even fucking around, he's entertaining - his akira busts out all the nastiest combos with ease, even though he refuses to play akira seriously. He tried jacky vs. fei's lion (and lemme just say lion is like fei's backup backup) and inashi'd literally like four times per round. Rod's got potential to be a complete bastard but he'll tell anyone he's been lazy lately and needs to get back into training.

Shou: is medium large like me, but asian and tanned. He's got straight parted hair, medium to short length, and often has shades perched on his head. He smiles a lot and wakes up early for a VFer.
He's got an above average akira whose trademarks are kneeing all the time and using lots of df+PK setups. Did I mention df+PK makes me cry because I always dodge it too early and get crumpled? Or try an elbow and see it magically whiff..? Anyway. I think I had an edge on shou but it took me a while to learn against him. I ate a LOT of elbow reversals. If he plays others I don't remember who, but I'd like to see him try a wrestler. He's got the right mindset for wolf I think, I dunno why exactly.

Baobab: is one of the only VFhome regulars who I'd never even seen a picture of. He looks a little like the yahoo chess avatar he favors, except with curly white hair and buddy holly glasses. He also looks like 10 years younger than I had in my head. Too young to be trapped in a relationship NOOO BAO SAVE YOURSELF NOOOOO /versus/images/icons/blush.gif ...bao was one of The Minorities at the gathering /versus/images/icons/wink.gif
He plays aoi and goes pretty much exclusively for reversals... if those get thwarted he pretty much tries only PPPsweep or u+KG. In other words he's sort of a newbie. He DOES have a good sense for the reversal, and managed to ring me out with an inashi and grab about 100 of my mid pokes. He also switched up and reversed me high when I adapted and used less mids. He grabbed my rising attacks, both high and low. ....If he could pick up the rest of the game, I think he'd have the raw brainpower needed to be really good, but without a lot of hours playing VF2 or 3 he would do stuff like eat three trip'n'hammers in a row without escaping because he wasn't familiar with the command.

Okay, lemme wrap up:
The others: IIRC it was stompoutloud who had a bitch of a pai, he used the d+PK trip vs tech rolls a lot. I think a pounce is likely or free after that? And if so he could get a lot of damage potential out of pai. Speaking of that, I meant to mention a little combo llanfair taught me: df+P,K (charged) -> PPPsweep. ~100 points if you can talk someone into eating the K, which takes conditioning. It seems to also be stance dependent. I also remember playing hammerhead a little, but I thought he was a kage player? And yet I don't remember facing his kage. Mike1348239329 from cali plays a strong jacky. He's one of the few players who plays VF4 the way other people like to talk about in theory, but never practice: dodge everything rather than block it. He dodged about a million of my predictable low punches and just when I thought I had him in a lock for a throw, he'd do jerky's DA instead, my throw would whiff, then he'd throw ME. Still, I can't say he had anything on andrew or blondie... I base this on doing well with my wolf vs his jacky. Having checked his profile it seems he's a lion player? So it's too bad we didn't get to match up pai vs lion. Let me think... akira zero is a pad akira player, but pulls off a lot of surprising stuff with it, but his strategy.. needs help. Anonimuss was surprising. I thought he was literally an anonymous VFDC guy but now I realize he's registered. I liked his kage, he does flashy crap like f+KG and the b,f+K stuff, which caught me waaay too much. He'd be more of a threat if he sat down in training mode for like five hours and practice at least TFT-d+pk-knee-kickflip. He got less damage on his TFT combos than he did on his frequent b,f+P+G's =) ...Kungfusmurf comes in second for the VF fanboy shirt contest. He's a little guy who looks maybe..filipino? I'm probably dead wrong and it'll be embarrassing. Anyway he had on a bright yellow sega shirt. Third in the contest was llan who had a VP shirt with dural on the back.

The Final Blah Blah
So the arrangements ruled, the people were all cool, and I got as much VF as I wanted. It's great to wake up and take a 1 minute walk and only wait a minute or two for a game vs. talented players. The tournament part was even good - it fizzled out but up to that point it went smoothly under the direction of llanfair, with a little vocal assistance from jedi fei. The DVD thing was a bummer, but to be honest I didn't feel like I had a hope of winning... and without that, I was more glad to have all the informal play that started back up the instant the tournament died.

Huge props to adam "G-money-dog-love" yuki and crew "would you like directions to manhattan?" nyc. Both worked hard to make this happen, and provided valuable resources that most other people couldn't have come up with. I had a hell of a time and am looking forward to whatever's next.
Smaller props for people who wanted to come but couldn't make it.
No props to that dude I really wanted to meet! /versus/images/icons/tongue.gif

 

excellent report creed, very detailed, any idea when videos online or otherwise will available?

 

Dunno if it will ever get online (probably yes) but there's plenty of DVD footage and the menus etc are already done for it. So it's just editing at this point. Get a credit card and head to www.miova.com/nyg3/ (I think)

 

Originally, I wasn't going to write about the gathering but since people want to see one, here it is. NYG3 is the 4th VF4 event I've attended this year and probably the one I looked forward to the most. Before it, I had spent a few weeks studying other characters to prepare since I knew I have been slowly getting worse with the lack of local competition at my level or any competition for that matter. About 2 weeks before the event, I picked up Vanessa as my secondary character and wanted to test my flowcharts against other people. I pretty much wrote them out to battle people at NYG3. My main character is Akira but I was pretty rusty with him from not using him for months and I think it showed when I switched to using him on Saturday. Earlier on, I was more interested in playing Vanessa against a variety of people but due to some friendly advice, I changed characters for the remainder of the gathering.

<font color="white"> Random Thoughts </font color>
There's no doubt that I play aggressively and take a bunch of risks like trying to use Akira's knee to hit rising attacks but I find stuff like that fun. With the NYC players, I saw a different kind of play that wasn't really something I'm used to. Many of them are machi and play safe, something I've strived to not do for the last decade. Now, I'm not saying this style is wrong but one that I'm certain many VF players in the States aren't used to. I found it challenging to play against but also lacking excitement.

Since NYF, I'd like to think that I have improved a bit, a step perhaps. From what I saw of IMF and Blonde One, they improved by at least a leap. IMF's execution with Akira was near perfect and by the end of Sunday, he was playing more defensive than when he arrived. As an Akira player myself, I would say that he is the best Akira I have encountered yet.

Thanks go to the NYC crew for hosting and organizing the event.

<font color="white"> hiro </font color>
It's always a challenge to play against this guy. He switches from aggressive to machi within a match if not in a round so it makes reading him a bit difficult to say the least. His experience with attack patterns really shows as he remembers opponent patterns pretty well. Even when he chooses his main character, Wolf, I never know when he's playing seriously. I had plenty of enjoyable matches with him especially with Vanessa vs Wolf and found that he always had advice if asked.


<font color="white"> adamYUKI </font color>
I must be the complete opposite of Adam in play style. In fact, I'd say all of the training I've had in fighting games to this day, is the exact opposite of how he plays, which is overall very safe and without taking many risks. Just like at NYF, I lost the majority of matches that I played with him but this time around I left with a better understanding of how he plays and how good fuzzy guard is. His Akira is still on the backburner but Lion proved problematic for most people I think. Really, is this character's guessing game easy or what?


<font color="white"> OmahaJeffry </font color>
The only other midwest player to attend and a friendly "rival", Rodney still plays a good (but WEAK! /versus/images/icons/cool.gif ) Jeffry and an annoying (for me) Sarah. I've heard from other Nebraskans about how playing with the NYC crew has made his game more defensive and I'll have to say it's true. His Jeff would just crouch and keep going backwards while waiting for me to take the initiative. I would dashing elbow this guy 4 times in a row and he would still crouch. I really couldn't believe that when I saw it. As a side note, doesn't anyone in NYC fall to conditioning? /versus/images/icons/tongue.gif I must be too accustomed to opponents that change their play frequently within battle. Anyway, Rodney's Jeffry had some initial problems with my Vanessa which were probably the same issues I was dealing with when I played his Sarah. The Akira vs Jeffry matches were always fun grueling battles to the end though. Omaha is still WEAK though. /versus/images/icons/wink.gif


<font color="white"> Llanfair </font color>
Coming from Toronto, Llanfair is probably the player that is most similar to me in style. Our Vanessa vs Pai matches were extremely fun to play and watch I'd imagine. I wanted to play him more but I didn't really get to. Hopefully, when I go up there, we'll get in a bunch of matches.


<font color="white"> mike92123 </font color>
I actually played Mike before at the E3 gathering this year when feixaq ran the tourney. At the time, he played Wolf and oddly, I don't recall much about that match (I was extremely tired when I finally arrived to spotlite's place that night). This time around, he was the person I met off the airplane at LGA. From the beginning of NYG3 to the end, I saw how his Lion's play style changed to match the NYC players' defensive style. He abused the meteor punch sabaki over and over later on. In the tournament, it looked like we were scheduled to play each other again but Llanfair did some switch where I had to face Adam and he played against Hiro. I hope to play against him next year in Evo when I come by for E3.

<font color="white"> anonimuss </font color>
I've played Dennis before at E6 and one time when he came down to STL. His Kage has always displayed great instinct which he certainly showed to the other players at NYG3. All he needs is more human competition & some practice with the good TFT combos to become one of the better Kages around. I hope you can make it to E7.


I'm certain I forgot a great deal of stuff but I'm at work so a second part will be forthcoming. /versus/images/icons/tongue.gif

 

I dont really write good reports, so I'll keep it simple. NYG3 is the most fun Ive had playing a video game. If you get the chance to go to a gathering I suggest you do it. thank you adam for being a great host. I learned so much from everyone who went. I can't comment on how people played except that we all have what it takes to be the best. I think the united states is going to make a name for itself in the land of VF. This is our time and nothing, I mean nothing is going to stop us. So good luck to everyone in there practicing. I cant wait to fight you all at NYG4 or sooner.

 

"This is our time and nothing, I mean nothing is going to stop us."

the japanese vf players will.... LOL /versus/images/icons/grin.gif

 

I'm not filipino or a fanboy and Anime was long time ago for me /versus/images/icons/confused.gif . Besides I only run conventions now, I don't attend them anymore. Oh Creed, I'm not small it's just that you're big that's all.

 

ha! sorry. you little Fanboy.


..juuust kidding. /versus/images/icons/wink.gif

 

Sal, this thread is for people who attended NYG3. If you want to discuss this event with us, please do it in a constructive manner. We dont need your irrelavent and mocking posts in this thread.

 

i don't see a little "m" next to your username..

 

dude, who was i mocking? and since when was this thread for ppl who attended nyg3 only? and hey, it IS the truth anyway.

ppl really gotta pay attention to emoticons.

 

You know what, if only we had online play then we could settle this as many times as need to see who is really the bloody best in the World. Hey while we're at it let's invite all the races throughout the universe settle the Title of best in the universe as well. Just a thought and besides the U.S. team can always take it outside if all VF4 / VF4 Evo matches fails. /versus/images/icons/mad.gif Oh yeah better fight dirty, I heard some of these guys know judo and Karate or something like that.

 

That would be everyones dream, but it has been said time and time again: With a game like VF or any fighting game rather, frames are very important. With stupid lag problems over the net don't expect to see it happen anytime soon. ("successfully", don't give me VF2 pc as an example)