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Druidz's Skatan and myself (Yagami) visited Holland this weekend to attend the Red Fight District fighting game tournament.

 

 

We arrived Friday, one day before the actual tournament was set to begin and instantly took the train to the area where the tournament was going to be held, Weesp. Weesp is a suburb close to Amsterdam and we spend our whole trip there. Since the venue had not opened the day we arrived, we spent most of our day walking around Weesp, a really nice area with lots of water, houses of varying appearances and a nice amount of nature. During our walks the highlight of the trip happened: beside a road we were walking along there was a big field with sheep. 

The only thing between us and the sheep where a small trench. Skatan, being eager for adventure with the sheep, decided to jump over the trench, and of course, fell into it due to how deceitful the trench was about where it ended. We went back to the hotel laughing and Skatan washed his soiled clothes. 

 

The next day, we went to the venue early in the morning. The SSFIVAE tournament wasn't until the Sunday, but we wanted to get some causal matches with the international players and I was attending the Street Fighter III: Third Strike (3s) tournament as well. The first thing we thought when we got to the venue was “Is this it?”. The venue was way smaller than we expected since there was about 200 people signed up for the SSFIVAE tournament. 

 

I ended up 9th place in the 3s tournament after losing to Low Land Lion's Ryan Hart aka Prodigal Son in winners bracket and later on being eliminated by a good Makoto player whose name I did not catch. 

Me and Skatan also got some causal matches going, but since there were three fighting game tournaments being held there wasn't many casual stations for SSFIVAE. 

We mostly played with the famous Swiss player V-Ryu when at the venue, and later we were invited to get some causals at one of the Dutch player's house since there were so little room for causals at the venue.

 

We arrived early again during the Sunday, this time to play the SSFIVAE tournament. Both me and Skatan were placed in early playing pools and made it out of them with the top seed. 

We then had to wait quite a while before the brackets started so we took the time to relax and hang around with some of the international players we've gotten to know through similar events.

 

When the winner bracket started I won my first match against a Ryu player I had not heard of before. 

After that I was up against the Dutch player Ferdi aka II Seth II, who placed third in the tournament. 

He stared off using Abel against my Dhalsim, a very bad matchup for Dhalsim. In spite of the matchup, I won the first match quite convincingly. 

He then switched character to Seth. I do not have much experience regarding Seth since Seth players are uncommon at the moment, but considering his rush down tools, Seth is also probably a bad matchup for Dhalsim. 

Using Seth, Ferdi was able to win the remaining two matches against me, sending me to the losers bracket. 

During the match against Ferdi's Seth I felt that his biggest advantage against me was that I did not now the matchup well at all. 

In the losers bracket I won my first match against a Dudley player and then had to face BaD_Liky, whose main character is Rufus, once again a very bad matchup for Dhalsim. 

I lost this match and ended up taking 25th place in the tournament.

 

I was not very happy with my performance in the tournament. I also felt quite frustrated having had to face such bad matchups for Dhalsim. 

This has made me decide to focus more on playing Sagat, whom I might start maining in the SSFIVAE 2012 Edition. Dhalsim is receiving some buffs, but I still feel like he will have those really bad matchups. 

Sagat on the other hand has potential to be among the high tiers in the 2012 Edition, and his defensive play style suits me. 

 

The next segment is written by Skatan and is about his experiences in the tournament.

 

For this tournament I had decided that I would be using Chun-Li as my main character, and Sakura as my backup for matchups that I haven't quite learned with Chun yet.

The reason for me switching to Chun is partly because I feel she will get buffed in the upcoming 2012 patch, but also because I feel she is more versatile and stable as a character.

I will however keep a pocket Sakura at all times since I know that her damage output and mixups are almost able to pull out a win against any player if worse comes to worst.

 

I was placed in a fairly easy pool, the only player that I knew that I had to watch out for was a Boxer-player, I believe it was Bushin from holland, that I had played against the day before in casuals.

I used Chun throughout the poo, except against a Gouken-player where I lost the first match due to failing some throw techs and then switched to Sakura since I know that is a very favourable matchup for her.

It was a very even match against the boxer-player but in the end I managed to squeeze out a 2-0, but to be honest I ate way more overheads than I should have, I still feel like I can improve on this matchup on a few aspects.

After the pool-play was done I was placed into brackets and my first match was against a Dudley player, I was very on point with my zoning in this match and he couldn't figure out a way to break through it.

This matchup is very good for Chun Li since her pokes are extremely dominant compared to what Dudley has, so as long as she avoids getting knocked down it should be in the bag for the Chun-player.

I also felt that my reactions were on top since I was able to whiffpunish almost anything he tried, I also managed to reaction punish one of his backdashes which ended our set 2-0 in my favour.

 

After that I had to play against against a Dictator player called ChaozTheory, he was stronger than I had expected and he gave my Chun quite a bit of trouble, this is a matchup that I need to get more playtime with.

He took the first win, and I opted to use Sakura instead as I've had a lot more experience in this matchup and I can more easily punish him for pressing buttons and doing things on his wakeup.

It was very close but I managed to clutch it out with some decisive ex shooken usage and confirms from her crouching medium kick into hp shooken.

After this I played a pretty long casual-set against a Ryu-player, I believe he was from Italy, but I didn't catch his name.

 

Next up I was put up against Starnab, known as one of Europes absolute top-players and a very skilled Feilong player even on the global scale.

I felt very confident in the Chun Li vs. Feilong matchup since I had played a very long set against swedish player Keffi a few weeks prior to this, so I knew what all of my answers was to what Feilong would use.

My main tactic in the matchup was based around Chun-Li's standing medium punch, it has a lot of range and is quite fast, it also gives her frame advantage on block so Feilong can't stop her from poking by using reversal rekka after blocking something.

Starnab seemed to have trouble working around my zoning with her ranged normals, but in the end he managed to get in and landed some big damage and put me in the corner.

Through playing this matchup a lot I have learned to react to Feilong's highly damaging command grab with a jump, and since I sensed that Starnab would try something risky to even out his health deficit I saw it and jumped it into a jumpin combo.

However, I failed the combo and he almost came back, but in the end I closed out that round and match.

In the second match he switched up his style a lot, he gave up on trying to out footsie Chun fair and square and decided to bypass the poking by using Feilong's Chicken Wing kick to get in and deal damage through mixups.

I am very confident in my blocking skills so I managed to avoid taking a lot of damage in this situations and then push him out into the range where Chun is more dominant.

In the last round I managed to land counter hit medium punch into her ultra 1, which is a difficult confirm that I've put a lot of time into learning and perfecting, the crowd really responded to this which was a great feeling.

I won 2-0 against Starnab, and was very satisfied with how I had played the match.

 

After playing against one of the killers in the tournament I was immiediately put up against another big name, namely ld Poongko from South Korea, a player known for having beat Daigo Umehara 2-0 at evolution and topping it off with a perfect.

Needless to say I knew that this would be an uphill struggle, especially since he also used a character that is very unfamiliar to me on high-level play. That character is Seth.

I decided to go with Sakura since I hadn't played the Seth vs. Chun matchup in over a year, so I tried to remember everything I had analyzed through watching videos and streams of him playing and focus on playing defensively until he made a mistake.

My plan worked well, but I wasn't ready for Seth's hitbox after recovering from a shoryuken which put me at a far distance away, making my regular punishment combos, this caused me to lose out on a lot of damage which cost me the round and the match.

The second round wasn't much unlike the first, Seth's mixup game is so dangerous that if you end up in it even once you better believe that you won't be escaping it without paying with atleast half your lifebar.

In the end Poongko knocked me down into the losers bracket, where my next opponent would be Coungster, a famous and talanted player from France.

 

Coungster decided to use Yun against me, and since I feel the Yun vs. Chun matchup is extremely bad I went with Sakura from the get-go since I had experience in that matchup and felt that I would win.

I was surprised at first at how good Coungster's Yun actually was, since he was initally a Honda-player, so I felt early that I wouldn't get away with shenanigans.

Therefor I decided to just play the matchup based on reacting to whatever Yun was doing instead of trying to force anything on him. 

I don't remember much fromt he actual match other than it was very even and went back and forth all the way until the end.

However I still remember what cost me the match, I read a backdash from him and tried to punish with her hp shooken on reaction, I wasn't fast enough and the hp shooken landed on block and the punishment combo cost me the match.

It was a very regrettable loss, but I knew from the beginning that it could go either way and Coungster is a very strong player so I was more frustrated at having failed to execute something that I knew worked rather than who I lost against.

 

I ended up on 9th place along with french top player Evans and Bushin (the boxer player).

It was a good experience and I liked the feeling of the tournament and the caliber of the players that showed up.

Red Fight District felt like a good warm up for the coming Canada Cup I will be attending on the 5th and 6th of November, playing for Team Europe in the international 5on5 tournament!

 

Overall we felt like Red Fight District was a good event. The organization was good (quite amazing how they made the tournament flow good with that many players in such a small place) and it really managed to bring a lot of top players, including Ryan Hart (UK), V-Ryu (SWI), Louffy (FRA), Starnab (FRA), Evans (FRA) and Cuongster (FRA), probably very much since they had arranged for Korea's top player, Poongko, to attend the tournament. Our only complaint was the size of the venue, but even considering the venue it was a great event, especially since it was their first time organizing it.

 

We hope they will keep organizing Red Fight District and we hope to go there again next year!