Euro VF Gathering in Amsterdam, 29-30 August, 2009

noo! my crappy akira got uploaded

ggs, everyone.

 

Damn NGKrush, hold your chin up high because you've made me proud, representing Jeffry!

Marlyjay you bullshiting me?! I watched your match against Jeneric and my ass was glued tight to the chair! Really exciting and impressive it was nothing compared to how you were describing yourself so negatively! Jeneric's a beast though, it looked like he was pushing your limits man! Props to the both of you it looks like it was one hell of a tournament, and congratulations to everyone else too!

 

Definitly one of the best experience in my life
Marly sorry, we didn't say goodbye each other. I was doing the tourist in Amsterdam and i went too late at Ngkrush's home.

Thanks to Krye, NgKrush and Jeneric for all the tips they gave me, and thanks to Bob for all the compliments about my fighting style with Wolf, and Thanks to every single guy i meet in Amsterdam. Everyone was really polite and gentle with me, even if my english wasn't so good to understand everything.

I can't wait fot the next gathering let's do another one guys

 

As much as I enjoy playing VF, watching those vids makes me want to play it even MORE! I need to travel to one of your gatherings as well. Thank you all for doing this and uploading the photos and vids.

 

Damn Plague, youre so positive that its contagious!

 

Alright! All of the recorded tourney matches have been uploaded!

Double Elimination Bracket with 8 players:

Euro VF 2009 Tournament: Mister(Wolf) vs Krye(Lau)

Euro VF 2009 Tournament: Akebueno(Shun) vs Bob(Akira)

Euro VF 2009 Tournament: NGKrush(Jeffry) vs Reaver(Akira)

Euro VF 2009 Tournament: MarlyJay(Eileen) vs Jeneric(Vanessa)

Loser Bracket matches, first row:

Euro VF Tournament: Mister vs Akebueno

Reaver vs MarlyJay: Reaver had to leave, so Marly had a bye!

Winner Bracket matches, first row:

Euro VF Tournament: Bob(Akira) vs Krye(Lau)

NGKrush vs Jeneric: Not recorded, my camera had no room left, so I had to empty my storage device while this match was being played

Loser Bracket matches, second row:

Euro VF Tournament: NGKrush(Jeffry) vs Akebueno(Shun)

Euro VF Tournament: Krye(Lau) vs MarlyJay(Eileen)

Loser Bracket matches, third row:

Euro VF Tournament: Krye(Lau) vs Akebueno(Shun)

Winner Finals:

Euro VF Tournament: Jeneric(Vanessa) vs Bob(Akira)

Loser Finals:

Euro VF Tournament: Jeneric(Vanessa) vs Krye(Lau)

Grand Finals:

Tournament Finals: Bob(Akira) vs Krye(Lau)

 

Hej alla!

Thanks for the great weekend. It's made me truly re-discover the pleasures of travelling like this, especially with the effort made by the marvelous host and co-host Sir Twan and MeinHerr Wouter! Thanks a lot Twan, you upped the reqs for housing people. And it was very good to meet you again Sofiane - it had been too long! Seeing you three at the airport promised a good weekend.

As is customary, let me make some short commnents on the playstyles of you whom I've played with during the weekend (I'm sorry if the comments will be running shorter the longer I write, but that's just how it is):

Mister:
Yes I think you really have good and inspired ideas while playing! Such as the tackle to get to the other side of a downed opponent, your choice of throws, doing the half circular moves and seeming to considering the frames a lot while deciding how to attack. I think these are good ideas for making you improve continuously now and in the future, and from what you told me of the VF-scene in Italy, you also managed to convince me never to get an Italian girlfriend..


Lewis and Marly: So cool of you to come from England, making this gathering truly international! You both seem to have quite a bit of experience which makes me wonder where you got it. Is online this powerful, or have you been meeting in secret to play?

Marly:
I thought I would surprise you with that I know about defending against Eileen (Skatan here in Sweden plays her alongside Pai), but it ended up the other way around I think - I didn't know your style at all!

Unfortunately for you, Akira does do a lot of damage, and most of the time your punishments and defensive techniques couldnt lessen the damage you took enough to be effective. For winning, Eileens offensive couldn't be enough on it's own so improving on the defense is a must, but this can only come with time.

What you can do at once though, is put a cork to the largest hole I could use against you. Often, you used an attack from standing still, sometimes after a blocked attack and sometimes during flowing gameplay, which meant that where it was possible for me to do so, I could backdash and punish with a launcher to steal the round right there. Usually, the most damage I would eat from trying a backdash in these situations were maybe your long range twin kicks, or a single hitting move.

Ideal for you would not be to making me stop backdashing (<-- important, because stopping the backdash can't really be done), but to make me unable to make a significant punishment after the backdash. If you could do that, I would be forced to evade if I wanted a big punish, and generally speaking the evade is much more risky than the backdash.

For this, I recommend using different attacks and making the distance a little bit more important in your decisions. As an example, using a single punch while you and me are standing far apart would on the surface seem to have little chance of connecting (I first wrote "chance of bearing fruit" but started laughing so had to delete it ), but if I'm rushing in with an attack at the same time, your fast punch will hit me. If I stand still, I won't have time to react and punish you. Continuing on this, if you use a bigger move, like an elbow, I might in the worst case scenario be able to punish you if I just stood still, but certainly not if I backdashed. Both speed of recovery and the distance are factors in this.

To finish, I don't understand how you got me all the time with one shoulder --> throw and jump in with that strange jump she has --> throw all the time. I hope you never teaches anyone else how to do that!

Lewis:
We had a long discussion the last day and I hope you'll just go through that again in your head if you need any more opinions from me about how you should defend ^^ . I hope you'll stick with one character though, who's not Sarah; Lion is much more manly (YES HE IS).

-- To everyone --
I want to repeat the advice that I usually give with a variation: If you find yourself not moving the joystick, or pressing a button, ask yourself why. If the answer isn't "I think doing nothing is the best thing for this moment", then you should probably be pressing something, especially if your opponent is.

What's important here is to do things one at a time. Like we talked about Lewis, like when escaping throws after Lions 44k,p was ducked: you only need to escape 2 directions here, so pushing the buttons too many times hoping to get 3 or 4 throw escapes will only be unnecessarily hard, with little gain.

So, pressing buttons all the time is good; pressing them with the wrong intentions are bad. Finding balance is the key! .


TWAN:
Like last time, we had a lot of games but you did very good this time I think. Home court advantage really shouldn't be undervalued, but other than that I don't know what you did different. Perhaps attacking with more confidence, or defending with more confidence. Focusing on getting the big damage, and avoiding doing easy mistakes, was a good thing I think.

I tried to hint at this a little bit, but what's truly needed for you is to HATE your opponents a bit more. To wish them no less than total destruction at your hands. Playing sets where there is a clear winner, like ft5, could make this easier I think. Some people don't understand of hating your opponent, and I thought you wouldn't since you're such a nice guy housing us and all, but after reading your comics I don't know if I'm really the right person to tell you about hate! :> . Anyway, if you got copies of those I would like to buy some; since coming back to Stockholm I've dreamed of using the comic as a screen saver at work, but I'll probably just settle for them to be on my living room table for guests to read .

--

It was also very fun to play some Tekken at the event!

Wogus, I'm sorry that I stepped out in the middle of our second set to 10, but you can at least be content that you won overall more games than me! It was fun hearing about your experience in Korea, and as I first didn't remember that Steve was your main character, thinking it was one of your many secondaries, I was so overwhelmed when you finally picked him... I don't know what you think of the Steve vs Jin matchup, but I've played it from both sides a long time and think that more care needs to be taken from Steve's side than the tier-list would imply. It was therefore interesting to hear your views on Steve in T6, since that should mean that Jin > Steve there! Fellow Swede Jelo will be very happy if this is the case .

Malekith, as soon as I saw you I started remembering almost everything from UT8, except any games we might have played there - so it's good that we played some now! I'm happy that you didn't pick Asuka since I wouldn't have been able to learn anything from that small amount of games played, but with your Paul you defended against all my attacks with either short movements or counter attacks, and you defeated my defense quite simply. So! I'm very impressed. Too bad I can't remember any previous victories to sooth the memories...

Sofiane, you know so many characters now - too bad you couldn't pick Bryan because of the bad 50 hz. I know how frustrating it can be to not be able to perform at 100% but still smiling and agreeing to play with me and Jonas was very kind. I wonder which of your characters you will pick in this weekend's tournament? And also, who would be the most dangerous with King; you or our Swede Jadi... This will be an interesting match to see in the future, but maybe it will have to wait for Tekken6.

Hat's off to you all! And the next time we'll meet I'll bring the cavalry, the artillery, and the whole fucking fury of the Motherland! (Russians stole this title from us long time ago).

I have to go now but'll write more stuff later.

Till then -

/Bob

 

LOL why? :°D I don't remember any discussion about that

 

Finally got time to get on the internet so I'll do my little write up, sorry if I forget to mention anything/anyone

Firstly I'd like to thank Twan for being such a great host and looking after everyone and making us feel most welcome, everyone was extremely hospitable and I'd love to come back again.

And thanks for discussing Sarah strats and helping me out with understanding frames etc

Thanks to Krye for co-hosting and organizing the tourney, also I think you win in the best stick competition

Thanks to Marly for putting up with me, we had a good laugh man, and I remember constantly saying about how its a shame the other UK guys couldn't make it as they really missed out.

We need to go london and play Blazblue ok?

Bob & Jonas, Man you guys are good! I guess you where right when you said the Swedes are coming to Destroy! you guys where very humble and friendly and where willing to share strats and help out the nubs like me, was a pleasure meeting & playing you both.

Thanks for the help and advice you gave me Bob, every time I put VF on I spend time in the dojo practicing my evades and throw escapes. I wish I could stick to 1 character, (I think I have OCD when it comes to that) but as of late I'm still trying lion and getting pwned in quest mode! but once again thanks for the advice, I'll do my best to put it to good use.

Maurits, was a pleasure meeting you and thanks for being a 'tour guide' and talking with us about Holland and everything Dutch.

Mister, it was good to meet you and play you, sorry if i didn't speak to you much, blame the language barrier (even though your English is probably much better than mine

When I played you on the Saturday I think we where very even and the matches were very close, but then when we played again on the Sunday I was so surprised at how well you adapted to my game, I don't know if I was on a downer that day in terms of VF but I now know to fear wolfs throws. hopefully soon i can play you online.

Thanks to everyone else : Ake (your shun mixups had me going )Sofiane, MasterPasje (I wish I played Lion vs Lion with you), Fulan (pleasure talking with you and playing some BB with you), and was great to meet and play anyone else I forgot to mention!

I'm so glad I went to this gathering, I can't say how much I enjoyed it and I would gladly come over again, seeing the job Twan & Krye did organizing and hosting has inspired me to try and organize gatherings myself, maybe in the next year or two. maybe get a few of the UK guys round first then maybe a Euro gathering in the near future, although it will take something great to beat the dutch gathering

Oh yeah GG's everyone!!

Thanks once again, see you online and hope to play you all again in the Future

MP

 

thanks for the kind words bob, I can get into what your saying I think I lost that feeling (the little I had) because we've been playing in a small group for so long. It was great seeing you again and I really enjoyed our games over the weekend, over our games I lost the idea that I was being outplayed in any situation and feel I came closer to beat you, next time that'll be my goal!
I have a shop for my comics on www.twanmul.com but if you don't have paypal, send me a mail or pm so we can figure something else out

I'll send out a proper reply on the weekend later in the week!

 

I'm kinda sad we didn't get a chance to talk about your work & discuss everything Art & Illustration Twan

I had no idea you created your own comics aswell, awesome!

 

Yeah Louis, I think we had too much vf on our minds, next time!
I like your flickr stuff too, made me laugh!

 

thx 4 sharing!
'r there more photos?

 

Real Name: Salih Demirci
Nickname: schakal
From: Germany
Main Character: Shun

 

I'm sorry, have not seen the date.
Merry christmas and happy new year!

 

Haha, TOO LATE! Maybe next year

Merry christmas man!

Hmm, maybe I should try to get the dutch guys playing again...

 

Schak it was awesome if you want to know