HyperX’s Daigo Umehara is the perennial warrior. Much like his patented Ryu, he is always on the hunt for strong opponents to test his mettle against, and gives each and every one a run for their money.
Osayu is one such competitor, and gives Daigo a serious battle. His Cammy is very solid, with lots of strong techniques and good mixups with the tools in his arsenal. They recently faced off in a couple of ranked sets online, and the results are matches that should leave players of both characters scribbling notes in their notepads.
Echo Fox’s Mew2King is highly regarded as one of the best Smash players of all time. Put the man into Losers Bracket, however, and it becomes increasingly difficult to bet on him. His inconsistency after dropping a set is duly noted, and he’s rarely able to win after being knocked into the losers side.
At UGC 2016, we saw a different M2K, and Daniel Lee of Yahoo! Esports goes over what was different between Mew2King’s usual Losers Bracket performance, and the one we saw at UGC–which ultimately saw him take 2nd place behind Armada after resetting the bracket. He goes over the way Mew2King was making decisions and using proper spacing and mixups to lead to his impressive run through the bracket, even besting his perennial rival Hungrybox en route to Grand Finals.
Kim1234 is back for another episode of his Jump-In podcast. Usually, this podcast features a special interview–but this time, we have a sit down with his co-host Logan-sama via the magic of Skype.
In this episode, they talk about the importance of community within the FGC, and how infectious hype can be at events. They also skew off the FGC path by talking about fellow fighting game fan and pro wrestler Kenny Omega’s recent main event at New Japan Pro Wrestling, and discuss the season 2 off-season moves.
Starting as he means to hopefully go on, TSM|ZeRo has claimed the first spot in the 2GG Championship Finals, with a victory at 2GGC: Genesis Saga. With no Saga Curse to work against him, ZeRo was operating at his max power for this tournament, taking the event from Winners’ Side. For the most part, his path to victory was unopposed, defeating eM|Elegant, SS|Mr. E, eM|Zenyou, CLG|VoiD and 2GG|komorikiri in top 48 to take the whole tournament. His only close match was against Zenyou in Winners’ Semis, going to game 5 and clutching out the win with a crucial edgeguard against the SoCal Mario. Mario players seem to have ZeRo’s number as C9|Ally, IMT|ANTi and now Zenyou have all given the current world number one a fair share of trouble in recent tournaments. Zenyou seemed to be channeling ANTi during the set, even landing ANTi’s infamous ladder combo from The Big House 5 to take game 3 against ZeRo. Watch out for this plumber next week, I tell you.
His opponent in Grand Finals, 2GG’s own komorikiri, had a dicey run to reach that final match, dropping down to Losers’ bracket uncharacteristically early on after losing to Fox main Eon. He then had to battle through an absolute onslaught of players, taking down 2S|Scizor, FS|Fatality in an explosive five game set, RNG|Dabuz, MKLeo’s cousin Javi, fellow Sonic player Circa|6WX, Zenyou, Tweek and VoiD to make it all the way to Grands. His final two games versus Tweek and VoiD were particularly close, with komorikiri squeaking out 3-2 wins over both US contenders. In the Cloud mirror versus Tweek, it was all down to who kept stage and Limit advantage the longest, with komorikiri eventually taking control and closing out the set with a two stock in game 5. While he may not have won Singles, at least he and FOX MVG|MKLeo took victory in Doubles, with their dual Cloud team looking borderline broken in the face of the competition.
Against VoiD, he switched off Cloud by game 3, opting to use the Blue Blur Sonic for the rest of the set. Even with this character switch, VoiD remained relentless with a two stock victory in game 4 to force yet another game 5 showdown. It looked like VoiD was set to guarantee a second place finish, with komorikiri being at over 105% before VoiD took any damage on the final stock of the set. Unfortunately for Hawaii’s hero, Rage looks fit to swap VoiD’s fourth place curse for the third place curse in 2017, rewarding komorikiri with the victory as VoiD died to a Sonic up air on the center of Duck Hunt at 64%.
The Duck Hunt stage seems to like VoiD in one set, then despise him in the next. VoiD racked up another win against MKLeo in Winners Semis, with the set being decided by VoiD’s decisive victory on the stage to clinch the series 3-2. VoiD is now positive in sets against MKLeo, with one win here and another at 2GGT: ZeRo Saga.
MKLeo was looking quite comfortable before facing VoiD, winning against Mewtwo main Rich Brown 3-1 in the first round of top 48, before having to fight against his cousin Javi in Winners’ Quarters. There was no familial mercy in this set, with Leo defeating his cousin 3-1 before his fight with VoiD. In Losers’, it was another Cloud mirror as Leo had to fight off Tweek to stay alive in bracket. After some back and forth for the first three matches, Leo decided to switch to his other swordsman Marth to try and claw back the set. While his Marth has worked wonders before, Marth’s Falchion could not match Cloud’s Buster Sword, with MKLeo losing 3-1 to Tweek and finishing at fifth place.
Cloud players were definitely acting as gatekeepers for the whole of top 8 of Genesis Saga, with both 6WX and YG|JK losing to Cloud in Losers’ Side, earning them both seventh place. While he may not be breaking his Limits in winning a US major anytime soon, he’s certainly going to stop anyone else from doing it.
With top threats like Mr. R, ANTi, MSF|Larry Lurr, NRG|Nairo and more absent from 2GGC: Genesis Saga, Genesis 4 still remains anyone’s game. The spirit of Smash 4 remains as mischievous as ever, with the convergence of global talent guaranteeing upsets at the supermajor. You can check out all the top 8 games, as well as a smattering of Doubles match by watching the below playlist from 2GG’s YouTube channel.
As BlazBlue: Central Fiction properly acclimated in the United States very recently, there’s still plenty of time to decide on another main or to consider a sub character. Since the cast is so large, it also pays off to learn another character just to get acquainted with their options.
Valkenhayn R. Hellsing is a character that intimidates most people, whether it comes to piloting the Hero or fighting him. He’s considered one of the stronger characters, considering the BlazBlue tier list by SKD. His wolf form allows quick traversal on the screen and to attack in an unpredictable manner, making it very difficult to react and block correctly. A good way to get started on controlling the character is by getting into his combos. BlackJaguarXD compiled a useful combo tutorial video which tells exactly how to perform a wide breadth of attack strings involving both forms.
Here’s some more advanced Valkenhayn combos; ArmorKiba is the person who did the video above.
