SFV Opening Tournament 3 is now over, this tournament series was a lot of fun and all the matches were exciting!
thanks for all the participants and the community for the great support!
You can see the results ->here<-
we asked Fitizen how he felt about the tournament and here is what he replied:
My first two matches were uneventful, I was mostly in control during them but I’ll be honest in that I don’t recall the details of them anymore.
Then, I met Beni in the third Match.
I tried to play very defensively at first, hoping that he’d whiff dives that I could punish but he proved to be more patient than that.
Throughout the entire tournament, I was able to abuse the lack of Vega knowledge people have and his high walk speed to dance in and out of throw ranges to bait them into teching.
Because of this, I consider Vega to have a very strong Shimmy game, since even a failed attempt “only” puts me at -2, removes my claw which is beneficial for the ensuing game up close and deals considerable damage as it starts off st.hp.
That also happened in this match, since I was able to bully him into not pressing buttons up close and then go to
work with the throw/shimmy mix up, or delay my st.hp a lot to catch buttons.
During the first match I feel I was still mostly in control but he changed his pace up which led to it being a much sloppier game.
Drops happened on both sides and in the end I lost by dropping my super on what would have been confirmed combo.
In the end, I was able to control the third match and win the set.
My next opponent was MDZ_Jimmy, he’s someone I know very well, met at various tournaments and consider a friend.
As people that follow his stream will know, he’s a rather aggressive Ryu and that’s the sort of Ryu I’m a lot more comfortable with.
I wasn’t particularly nervous before this game due to us having played quite a few times and he hadn’t manage to come out on top yet.
We’ve talked about our matches before and he said himself that he lacks match up knowledge, that coupled with those past wins made me very confident, although I definitely took him seriously.
There’s not too much to say about this game overall, I was able to play the game I wanted to play for the most part, although a very explosive change of pace overwhelmed me at one point and almost netted him the stun and win of one game.
I’m looking forward to playing sets with him and seeing his adaptations once he improves bit by bit in the match up!
Suddenly I was in Grand finals, where I expected to either play KBT or Beni again, obviously be hoping for KBT after what happened just now.
And I got what I wished for.
I haven’t looked at the replays but I feel he was a lot more defensive and patient this time around, which led to the matches being more drawn out, so he was able to abuse my lack of knowledge more and forced me into a much more predictable game plan.
I desperately tried to adapt to certain habits but I wasn’t able to do it consistently, that coupled with his pressure I knew little about and my own bad habits consistently punishing me (don’t dash every time after a neutral jump that’s out of range!), he defeated me 1-3 and reset the brackets.
I gathered myself, vowed to play more reactively but rush him down mercilessly when I had the chance to do so while not listening to my own muscle memory.
Since I’m the one writing this comment right now, you already know it worked – and it worked well!
I managed to win the second set 3-0, although in a less dominating fashion than the match in Winners Finals.
By now we’ve played two sets against each other and knew a lot more about the other player, I kept my bad habits in check and punished his attempts to abuse them –
– Whiff punishing his st.hp after neutral jump trying to catch my dash,
– Him jumping out of strings instead of subjecting himself to the shimmy/throw mix up I’m so fond of
just to name two.
Since he wasn’t able to get his game started, it was only natural I won since Vega has superior footsies.
I’m really happy I managed to win and put Vega on the map as a well designed character that doesn’t get enough love.
As a former Makoto main, I never would’ve thought that my main would be someone that was a very footsie heavy character in SFIV but he changed a lot and I feel his tool set heavily favors an offensive play style in this game.
Of course I’d also like to thank NSG for organizing these tournaments and I’d also like to encourage as many people as possible to participate, these tournaments are a great experience and losing early doesn’t cheapen it, as gaining experience is one of the most important things to become a good tournament player.
Good games to everyone I’ve played and I’m looking forward to see your adaption the next time we play!”