Last time I wrote about a smash nest I said I would forfeit to Falco's from then on until I learned the match up, which I really thought was the way to go honestly, the character was just too frustrating to fight against. In the two months since then I did see a lot of improvement but surprisingly not from practicing against Falco. I really focused on improving my reading comprehension and my ability to adapt, for the first time in years I took the opinions of other about my mindset and method of play seriously. I applied them and I ended up getting so much better that I felt that even though I hadn't spent two whole months playing against Falcos and learning the match up. I mostly just asked a few of my falco main friends on what falco's biggest weakness's were.
On the production side everything went pretty much perfect, besides one or two hiccups we were golden...for once. And honestly everything went so well that it renewed my passion for streaming events which is a really good thing and in the future I am going to be bringing a lot more cool stuff into the broadcasting scene.
But my blog is here to talk about the matches so hey lets go.
Mofat(Fox) Vs. Contra(Falcon)
Game 1 - This was an interesting set because I do not have a lot of experience against Falcon players and am generally pretty trash versus him. But I asked Wizzrobe and some local falcon players what you can really do against his nair, because about six months ago I lost a set against a Falcon because I just had no idea how to deal with the incessant nair spam you commonly encounter with Falcon players. Thankfully I had some answers this time although I was a little rusty. A lot of stuff caught me off guard and I didn't deal with most of what he did properly and I lost game 1.
Game 2 - So after throwing my wrist brace against the wall and proclaiming my trashiness against the character I sat back down and thought of what I was doing wrong and where to go next. I actually don't remember where we played for game 2 or even game 3. But I made a ton of adjustments to how I dealt with his nair which helped more than anything else, I also stopped going for his shield when he was on a platform to avoid the shield drop nair which I was getting pummeled with game 1. With the adjustments of really just getting hit less I was able to just barley squeeze out game 2 as a win.
Game 3 - By the time I was halfway through game 3 I had made all the adjustments and had on to how I was going to punish every mistake he made, which at this point a mistake equated to any time I was able to punish him for a nair or bait him into a shield drop up air which I would CC or just plain make him whiff, he made very few adjustments, notably he upped his grab and tech chase game, I get tilted by that usually but for some reason I was bursting with confidence so I just forced myself to memorize his patterns and tech a different way. All in all it was a solid win I was happy to earn it as Falcon is one of my weaker match ups.
Mofat(Fox) Vs. BundleOfSticks(Falco)
I knew it I just knew it, after a good win a Falco would just prance and do Falco things, he came up and plugged in his controller on the same setup I had just won on and moved his cursor over to Falco. I dipped my head and exhaled because I knew a pool without Falco was too good to be true. At the same time I didn't get myself too down over it because even though he was a Falco I know that generally in round 2 I don't get anyone that good. And thankfully he seemed pretty new, if not to the game then to Falco. He was wide open 90% of the set and didn't do a lot of Falco stuff really and I won 2-0. However I did get to warm up a lot of anti-Falco tactics though.
Mofat(Fox) Vs. BatteryDC(Fox)
Game 1 - Aaaah BatteryDC, Fatgoku's apprentice. I am reasonably good at Fox dittos, to the point where this was a pretty damn close game 1, the main thing about battery is that he has an absolute and obvious lack of experience in many many situations, he is otherwise a very solid player. I did a ton of weird stuff and continuously put out soft reads to catch him unaware and I got a lot of mileage off of it, I choked on the last stock though and committed way to hard and got punished for with a zero to death.
Game 2 - I played on tilt the game, its not a john, its just what happened. I was pretty upset over choking the last stock of game 1 because even though Battery is a objectively better player than me I know for a fact that I have it in me to win against him but I have to play exceptionally well which I did not do. I continued to let the first loss get to me and tilted more and more and got three stocked game 2. There were some shenanigans with my hands not working properly for a few of the close quarters situations. If I was more practiced in Fox dittos I have absolute confidence that I would have pulled off the upset and won the set. I intend to be much more prepared for fox dittos when I attend anniversary at epic.
Losers Match 1 - Mofat(Fox) Vs. BC(Falco)
Game 1 - He walked over and we were about ready to play when I asked him what character he played, he predictably replied "Falco." I sighed and said "Of course you do..." this or the next set is usually where it ends for me but with my new mindset I was all ready to get my ass kicked by another Falco player or maybe even win. As we started off he immediately began asserting pressure on my shield and I fell to it multiple times. I tried a few things but they didn't really pan out in game 1 as I lost the match.
Game 2 - This is where I kind of grabbed hold of my mentality flaws and turned them around to focus my energy on reading comprehension and punishes. I would get him when he was about to laser or when he would come in too hard with down airs and turn those into punishes. And through basically a ton of patients and punishes I was able to just barely win game 2.
Game 3 - With game 2 in the bag I had a little more confidence and a lot of momentum which I carried over and I think what really won me this game as well was the fact that he didn't really adjust to my new tactics enough and kept getting hit by punishes on his laser game. This was the real warm up set for my next match.
To get out of pools - Mofat(Fox) Vs. Alday(Falco)
Game 1 - Are you fucking kidding me? Another fucking Falco holy shit is this for fucking real? JESUS H. FUCKING CHRIST SERIOUSLY?! I hate Falco more than anything in this game in fact Falco has made me hate the game itself to a degree where I seriously was considering just playing smash 4 instead but hey this is the new me with a super cool outlook on the game so I went into it knowing I would be frustrated and would probably hate the experience overall. But I went into it anyway and applied a lot of the stuff I had just practiced in my previous set. I punished his bad lasers a whole lot and ended up just barely winning the game.
Game 2 - This game started out extremely well, I took out 2 of his stocks very quickly and established a dominant lead, mostly based off of the fact that I was punishing his laser game but for some reason it didn't last and he took back the lead in the same amount of time I established mine and it was freaking brutal. I went on tilt pretty hard for a stock or so but then I started regaining my composure and brought it back to 1-1 stocks. Ultimately I lost though.
Game 3 - I was mad I lost and screwed up at the very end so I went up to Steven and Foos and asked them where I screwed up, I got a little bit of advice from foos about playing a little more patient mostly but I used a lot of my own adjustments along with playing more patient and game 3 started. I got murdered pretty hard for about a stock and a half and was about to be down by 2 stocks to his 4 but I brought my composure back together and got off tilt. I began playing more patiently and got my laser punishes back and rolling to the point where every time I would punish him for a laser I would tack a good chunk of percent which helped me more than anything. It was extremely close but at the very end I caught him out of a tournament winner with a back air and holy fucking shit I got out of pools.
I have NEVER gotten out of pools at a tournament with the deck stacked like that, three Falco's? THREE FUCKING FALCOS JESUS H. FUCKING CHRIST. I got out of pools at a north west majors event where half my ROUND ROBIN pool dropped out and the remaining three were completely new to the game, there was no way I was getting out of that one honestly.
But at SmashNest13 I got out of pools through Contra (I'm bad against Falcon) And three mother fucking Falcos, Two of which nearly beat me. Is this real fucking life or am I being punked? Did I actually beat three mother fucking Falco players? Holy shit I did.
TOP 24 - Mofat(Fox) Vs. Aura(Peach)
I lost 2-0 lol. It was fine, I don't have the proper experience against higher level peach players, I naired way too much and got punished a lot, didn't really get down smashed that much and even was able to take the first stock of our set. Which I generally do against players better than me. But w/e I beat 3 fucking falco's and got out of pools I'm good for this tournament and I'll try to repeat my success at the next tournament.
Overall I played really consistently this tournament! Pretty damn steady 85% I would say. I never quite hit my 90% (Where I would have beaten battery dc at and probably would have 2-0'd all day) But hey consistency got me farther than I have ever been before. I want to duplicate this success at Anniversary At Epic in a couple of weeks.