Even though Geese Howard has a comparatively smaller move-set than his Tekken 7 colleagues, it can still be a little daunting to remember every single detail about a brand new character. Luckily, Sneaky_Coyote (whom you may remember also provided a similar guide for Master Raven) has stepped up to the plate to make “The Geese Bible”.
Divided into various paths and color coded based on risk, this document is a great resource for anyone needing to quickly reference one of Geese’s new abilities or combos paths. Considering the large number of moves he has that are unsafe on block (or safe but high), this is a valuable study guide for those learning to fight the king of South-Town, too.
There hasn’t been any recent progress regarding newly crowned middleweight champion Georges St. Pierre’s next move, and there might not be for a while.
Thomas “Brolynho” Proença has had a banner year. While he was unable to truly show off what he was made of at Capcom Cup 2016 — winning just one match — the drive to get better from that showing was obvious. He has dominated the Latin American region, and cemented his return ticket to Capcom Cup with relative ease.
Is the second time a charm for the Brazilian?
Devour
Last year, I commented on his well-rounded Necalli play. He was using every tool to the best of his knowledge, and made it work. He later found that at Capcom Cup, that doesn’t work out as well.
F3|Brolynho has clearly recognized how much Street Fighter V rewards aggression, and has turned that factor up a notch. He seems to be taking pages from Xiao Hai’s strategy and only giving up space to let opponents hang themselves. You often see Brolynho back up to bait players into making unsafe and desperate approaches, only to have the right button to stuff it. This kind of play makes you almost scared to do anything — which makes it an easy road to victory for him.
All He Does Is Win
Proença has earned his spot in spades this year. Having only really played in Latin America, he won a string of ranking events that can hardly be contested by anyone. In a staggering nine events, he has won five. Further, in all eight ranking events he played within the region, he didn’t miss top 8 in any of them.
While this speaks of his success in Latin America, the one international CPT event he played in was Evo, where he made top 32. This shows that he has the chops to play on the international stage. Further, he was just shy of making top 16 at Brooklyn Beatdown, again proving his mettle.
ISO Frequent Flyer Miles
The one thing that can nag you about Brolynho is just how little he has traveled this year. Given he has made it into Capcom Cup primarily off of being the best in South America, that isn’t necessarily the litmus test to say that he’s going to be a major threat in Anaheim. Sure, you’re the best in your region, but when your region doesn’t see that much international competition, that always puts the question of how ready you are to face the best in the world.
The best thing to do is see what his path was at Brooklyn Beatdown and Evo and how they stopped. His only marked victory at the ESL event was a win over Dieminion, but he soon after dropped to Kazunoko. This also means that he was put into Losers Bracket during pool play. He beat players like Brian_F and Smug at Evo, while losing to Bonchan and Yukadon. Of the international players he’s on the record of having beat, only one of them is currently in Capcom Cup, while the others are not. However, everyone that has beat them are potentially people he could face at Capcom Cup.
This isn’t something that you can say to dismiss him from having a chance. But there’s one more thing.
Everything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
Haitani has been travelling this year, and has done well with Necalli in his own right. Really, the two draw a similar parallel in their play this year, and thus people who would be ready for Haitani would also be ready for Brolynho.
While we could wonder whether Brolynho would have a higher seed than Haitani if he were to travel more, the fact of the matter is that Haitani has been facing the tougher players all year. Brolynho hasn’t. Not only will he have a chance to struggle against those better caliber players, they will also have a chance to show off more understanding of the Necalli match than he is prepared for.
Final Thoughts
Brolynho isn’t the only Latin American in Capcom Cup, but he is arguably the best in the region. While you could wager that MenaRD is better, the results in the region don’t lie: Brolynho is solid. The problem for me is that he’s a big fish in a small pond, and is about to be dumped into the larger one.
He’s been there before, but he hasn’t had a chance to do much to prove that he’s ready to deal with the bigger fish just yet. I’m almost expecting a repeat of his 25th place performance last year, but would love to be surprised.
With 2017 beginning to draw to a close, it’s time once again for the second Arc System Works Fighting Game Awards. Like last year, the event will be celebrating some of the top players in the company’s premiere airdashers, BlazBlue Central Fiction and Guilty Gear Xrd REV2. With both titles seeing balance updates and new characters, as well as coming off of the momentum of fantastic showings at Evo and Toushinsai 2017, this will undoubtedly be a spectacular event to kick off the new year.
This year’s participants were acquired in a similar fashion to the previous lineups, though in lieu of the 2016 Award’s fan voting, the last two spots in each game were determined by a series of online qualifiers, which just recently concluded. In regards to which players will be competing in these two double-elimination tournaments, the Chosen seeking the Azure in BBCF will be:
Monster/IGS|Kaibutsukun (Izanami, Nine The Phantom, Ragna The Bloodedge) – Co-Champion of Braver’s Rebel 2017
Fenrich (Jin Kisaragi) – Co-Champion of Toushinsai 2017
Iwashi (Ragna The Bloodedge) – Co-Champion of Toushinsai 2017
Film (Hakumen) – Co-Champion of Braver’s Rebel 2017
Meister (Lambda-11) – Gateway to BlazBlue Champion
Grover (Carl Clover) – Highest-placing American player at Evo 2017, tied for 9th
Online Qualifier A
Online Qualifier B
Those who will be getting ready to rock in REV2 are:
In order to find out who took the last two spots for each game, you can catch the online qualifiers that were held on November 25th and 26th, courtesy of Jourdal and Mdesilva, below.
The 2017 Arc System Works Fighting Game Awards will take place on Saturday, January 13th, 2018, at the e-sports SQUARE AKIHABARA in Tokyo, Japan. Streaming information was unavailable at this time, but given that Aksys Games stepped in to assist with last year’s English broadcast, and ASW has been streaming regularly on their own Twitch channel, they’re both likely candidates for home viewing. We’ll keep you updated here at Shoryuken as more details become available.
Haitani has been travelling this year, and has done well with Necalli in his own right. Really, the two draw a similar parallel in their play this year, and thus people who would be ready for Haitani would also be ready for Brolynho.