Well my brother is the only person I can play much with during the break. He's decent but not much of a challenge. But its cool, I am really getting used to tech-chasing and DIing during my practices with him. I'm trying to teach him what I know, but i think its just going to take him a lot of mere playing to get used to everything. He originally played Sheik, then switched to Zelda, but now he's favoring Ganon. Haha, another Ganon in the South. I wonder why the South loves Ganon so much.
Anyway, I think I'm as close to being an actual competent player as I've ever been. I think once I get used to DIing and tech chasing, I will actually be a decent player. Then I will have to find the next key step to getting to the next level.
I plan on going to Pound 3 in Baltimore, which will presumably be the last really big Melee tournament (its like a week or two before Brawl is released), so that means I have about 2 months to practice, and perhaps I can beat some guys in my pools at Pound, something I still have yet to do lulz. I'm sure they will still have melee tournaments after Brawl is released, at least during the beginning. If not, they will probably have them at the big tournaments. And my practice in Melee will almost certainly help in Brawl. I'm sure tech chasing is still in the game, and just general fighting strategies. I can't wait.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Smash Fest and DP
I played with munkus and anomaly the other day, and i feel like i'm getting a lot better. I'm way more confident with my Captain Falcon. I've been practicing with him the most out of every character i think. i've been practicing my sheik as well.
I think I mentioned DP in my last post. I played him first round of reflex's tournament..any way he put vids up of our set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLzpDk8NC4Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6nhvteueyI
he raped me of course, pretty badly.
i'm actually not too ashamed of how I played with roy. Yoshi's Story isn't one of my best roy stages, and i did have a few button slips, but i did alright. I think I need to use neutral-airs more. I noticed that in this match roy's shffld n-airs were effective at pre-empting aerial attacks.
i played pretty shitty with Falcon though. I just was making all the wrong choices. I kept going for knees when I should have just went for up-airs.
but I think the biggest lesson I learned from watching these videos is that I NEED TO LEARN HOW TO FUCKING D.I.
I have a bad habit of D.I. ing toward the opponent, which basically leads to endless combos, as you can see. I need to work on that. I can't work on it too tought with anomaly and munkus because I dont think they've picked up on it as well as higher level players, but we'll see.
I think I mentioned DP in my last post. I played him first round of reflex's tournament..any way he put vids up of our set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLzpDk8NC4Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6nhvteueyI
he raped me of course, pretty badly.
i'm actually not too ashamed of how I played with roy. Yoshi's Story isn't one of my best roy stages, and i did have a few button slips, but i did alright. I think I need to use neutral-airs more. I noticed that in this match roy's shffld n-airs were effective at pre-empting aerial attacks.
i played pretty shitty with Falcon though. I just was making all the wrong choices. I kept going for knees when I should have just went for up-airs.
but I think the biggest lesson I learned from watching these videos is that I NEED TO LEARN HOW TO FUCKING D.I.
I have a bad habit of D.I. ing toward the opponent, which basically leads to endless combos, as you can see. I need to work on that. I can't work on it too tought with anomaly and munkus because I dont think they've picked up on it as well as higher level players, but we'll see.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Reflex's Mega Fun Smash Challenge
Reflex held a tournament this weekend, and I rode up there with rob, moogle, coach, and duchock. The day before the tournament a bunch of people stayed over Prac's house just like they did for G4S4. I got to play a lot of matches with chad, iori, spaceballs, and coach. It was fun, and I think i played about as good as I can. In the tournament, There were no pools, so you kind of had to be good if you wanted to play more than two matches. I had to fight DP, a really good Mario player and then, JMOAN another player from the mid-south power rankings. I also teamed with Rob, and that was fun even though we got quickly dismantled, first by Laijin and Renegade, then by Bloshi and JMOAN. We have never played on teams before, plus we're neither really good at teams to begin with, but those guys are just good. Laijin has gotten pretty good over the past couple of years. Moogle was eliminated by reflex and then JMOAN, and I think those are matches he could have won. It seems like moogle is always one of the top ten players at least, at each tournament, but his results rarely indicate that. Coach and Moogle got fourth in teams out of 18 teams though, so that's cool. They were really close to getting third, just barely losing to XIF and Marty, a double Peach team. I hope they keep teaming, both moogle and coach are getting better, they'll be a money team in no time i think.
Anyway, I'm really learning to tech chase a lot more. With Roy I can tech chase with forward-b and grabs, I need to learn how to do it with other characters. I have to make it a habit just like teching. That shouldn't be too hard. I think once tech-chasing becomes second-nature, I will move to a higher echelon of play. A lot of times I lose simply because I'm given no room to even move because of good tech chasing.
I can notice myself getting better though, and I'm very happy with that
playing against Laijin and especially JMOAN, I've learned that Roy's just not good against sheik. Those needles really fuck him up, plus sheik can combo Roy really easily. I played fox against JMOANS sheik and got him down to 2 stock, and considering my lame fox, i think that's pretty good.
This tournament had free food. that was aweseome.
Improvement Thoughts
One thing that i've got to do is practice better control over my character. I think I'll have to move faster and mess up less if I want to be successful. I play a patient game, but that doesn't mean stop moving. When I play slow, it just makes it easier for the opposition to predict me. I've been playing some falcon and fox recently, and i play a lot better with them when I play really fast. you have to be REALLY fast to play falcon effectively.
Also I just have to be more graceful in my movements. I need to incorporate more wavelanding on ledges and I need to be able to pull off whatever move i need to do at that time.
Also, I'm going to study every character matchup and learn things like how fast they tech roll, how long before they recoever in the air, etc.
My Sheik is terrible, i need to study that.
Anyway, I'm really learning to tech chase a lot more. With Roy I can tech chase with forward-b and grabs, I need to learn how to do it with other characters. I have to make it a habit just like teching. That shouldn't be too hard. I think once tech-chasing becomes second-nature, I will move to a higher echelon of play. A lot of times I lose simply because I'm given no room to even move because of good tech chasing.
I can notice myself getting better though, and I'm very happy with that
playing against Laijin and especially JMOAN, I've learned that Roy's just not good against sheik. Those needles really fuck him up, plus sheik can combo Roy really easily. I played fox against JMOANS sheik and got him down to 2 stock, and considering my lame fox, i think that's pretty good.
This tournament had free food. that was aweseome.
Improvement Thoughts
One thing that i've got to do is practice better control over my character. I think I'll have to move faster and mess up less if I want to be successful. I play a patient game, but that doesn't mean stop moving. When I play slow, it just makes it easier for the opposition to predict me. I've been playing some falcon and fox recently, and i play a lot better with them when I play really fast. you have to be REALLY fast to play falcon effectively.
Also I just have to be more graceful in my movements. I need to incorporate more wavelanding on ledges and I need to be able to pull off whatever move i need to do at that time.
Also, I'm going to study every character matchup and learn things like how fast they tech roll, how long before they recoever in the air, etc.
My Sheik is terrible, i need to study that.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Waffle House
Thanksgiving Break just ended. Mslano came back into town from chicago during the break, and he came over to Tuscaloosa to play with me, anomaly, and munkus. it was just me and him for a few hours before anomaly and munkus arrived. I played about as good as I think i can at this point that night. taking mslano down to one stock almost every time. (i only beat him a couple of times, and usually due to his own mistakes :-P). His ganon is really good. Like I feel like I should be able to beat ganon with roy, he's easy to edgeguard with roy, and roy gets his DED combos and d-tilt upair combos on him easier than some other characters. but ganon's definitely mslano's best character, plus mslano also plays roy, so he knows the character in and out. we played some teams and I confirmed just how much I suck in teams. I've decided to, for now, play sheik if I ever have to play teams in a tournament. I'm a defensive player, and like you can't play defensive in teams. or something. with sheik I did alright but I found it hard to really get any kills. My main focus was trying to help my partner . If i can do this and get kills as well I think I could be a good teams player. That's the same thing that happened when I teamed with NES Noob at theifs 3rd tournament. I just kind of helped him and let him kill everyone.
The next night, mslano, george, and I drove to Huntsville. I hadn't played with those guys in a while so that was cool. i didn't play that well. part of it could be that I had to use a whole different controller than one i used the previous day. i played george, palmer, jwt, and moogle the whole time, basically. i didn't get to play coach, majist, or mslano. I dont know how to really fight kirby, who is george's new main. I think i went back and forth with george. Palmer's fox beat me a few times. These kinds of things kind of frustrate me, because I think I should be winning some of these matches against gimmicky players like Palmer. I'm just not good at developing ways to counter strategies, even if I'm fully aware of what the person is doing. and I think I have a few bad habits that have been programmed into my muscle memory. not to put palmer down though, he's gotten a lot better since I played him a few months ago. i played a bunch of matches against moogle. and he was raping me and george for an hour or two. especially when he played sheik or marth. I think those are his two best characters. i think moogle has gotten even better. I dont think he did any less than 3 stock me all night.
after that I played a bunch of matches against jwt. and I think by then I was as warmed up as i was going to be, and i played the best against him. jwt loses the matches for you sometimes, he gets frustrated easiily and can get into ruts because of it. he wants to play falcon, but his falcon isn't that good :-P his fox and g&w are good though. munkus told me once 'i think you have a better g&w than jwt'. thats no where near the truth lol. g&w is among my worst characters, i think.
i played a lot of IC's against JWT. he says IC's are the "joot counter" because he doesn't know how to play against them. I've noticed that not many people know how to. shit, I don't know how to. but I'm starting to think IC's are my second best character. I really think they are a superb character and even though they are high tier, i think they are still underrated. They're almost broken, in my opinion. you can do some dangerous stuff with them. and its not that hard to do either. Jwt complimented me on my desynching, but I was like "its not that hard to do". at least not the simple things. theres some advanced continuous desynch that's a bit harder. I can sort of do it, but I haven't found too much of a use for it yet. IC's like all my characters are pretty simplified. I've begun 'wavejab'ing, thanks to a good tip from Shai Hulud, and it' s a really sweet approach. if you hit the jab, you can follow with a downsmash, and if you are shielded, you can jab again or d-smash if they drop their shield, and if they don't you can grab. and grabbing with the IC's leads to30-40 damage at the very least if you know what you're doing. if you're in a position to wobble, you're given a stock. I can't bring myself to wobble though. i think, jab-ice d-throw-d-air, grab, repeat..finish with fsmash is much more fun and cool looking any way.
Reflex is holding a tournament this weekend and I have plans to go. I haven't been playing my best recently, but I should go anyway. i'll try to get some practice in this week. it will be interesting to see how everyone reacts to Roy, who is probably a character many of them don't play against that often.
Improvement Thoughts
I still think the best thing for me is to play against good people as often as possible, but there are a few things I need to work on even when i'm not playing really good people.
A while ago i asked moogle what I should work on, and he said 'you should tech chase more', and i'm still working on that. only recently have i really been trying to do it. but i've noticed tech chasing is why I lose stocks a lot of the time :-P. I get hit with get up attacks a lot when I tech chase, its hard to predict when the opponent is going to do that. well i suppose you could just stand by him and assume he's going to do it and shield grab.
Also I just need general practice on controlling my character. Nothing's more frustrating than screwing up a dash-dance and getting smashed because of it.
oh we went to waffle house with mslano because he missed it.
that's where the title comes form :-D
The next night, mslano, george, and I drove to Huntsville. I hadn't played with those guys in a while so that was cool. i didn't play that well. part of it could be that I had to use a whole different controller than one i used the previous day. i played george, palmer, jwt, and moogle the whole time, basically. i didn't get to play coach, majist, or mslano. I dont know how to really fight kirby, who is george's new main. I think i went back and forth with george. Palmer's fox beat me a few times. These kinds of things kind of frustrate me, because I think I should be winning some of these matches against gimmicky players like Palmer. I'm just not good at developing ways to counter strategies, even if I'm fully aware of what the person is doing. and I think I have a few bad habits that have been programmed into my muscle memory. not to put palmer down though, he's gotten a lot better since I played him a few months ago. i played a bunch of matches against moogle. and he was raping me and george for an hour or two. especially when he played sheik or marth. I think those are his two best characters. i think moogle has gotten even better. I dont think he did any less than 3 stock me all night.
after that I played a bunch of matches against jwt. and I think by then I was as warmed up as i was going to be, and i played the best against him. jwt loses the matches for you sometimes, he gets frustrated easiily and can get into ruts because of it. he wants to play falcon, but his falcon isn't that good :-P his fox and g&w are good though. munkus told me once 'i think you have a better g&w than jwt'. thats no where near the truth lol. g&w is among my worst characters, i think.
i played a lot of IC's against JWT. he says IC's are the "joot counter" because he doesn't know how to play against them. I've noticed that not many people know how to. shit, I don't know how to. but I'm starting to think IC's are my second best character. I really think they are a superb character and even though they are high tier, i think they are still underrated. They're almost broken, in my opinion. you can do some dangerous stuff with them. and its not that hard to do either. Jwt complimented me on my desynching, but I was like "its not that hard to do". at least not the simple things. theres some advanced continuous desynch that's a bit harder. I can sort of do it, but I haven't found too much of a use for it yet. IC's like all my characters are pretty simplified. I've begun 'wavejab'ing, thanks to a good tip from Shai Hulud, and it' s a really sweet approach. if you hit the jab, you can follow with a downsmash, and if you are shielded, you can jab again or d-smash if they drop their shield, and if they don't you can grab. and grabbing with the IC's leads to30-40 damage at the very least if you know what you're doing. if you're in a position to wobble, you're given a stock. I can't bring myself to wobble though. i think, jab-ice d-throw-d-air, grab, repeat..finish with fsmash is much more fun and cool looking any way.
Reflex is holding a tournament this weekend and I have plans to go. I haven't been playing my best recently, but I should go anyway. i'll try to get some practice in this week. it will be interesting to see how everyone reacts to Roy, who is probably a character many of them don't play against that often.
Improvement Thoughts
I still think the best thing for me is to play against good people as often as possible, but there are a few things I need to work on even when i'm not playing really good people.
A while ago i asked moogle what I should work on, and he said 'you should tech chase more', and i'm still working on that. only recently have i really been trying to do it. but i've noticed tech chasing is why I lose stocks a lot of the time :-P. I get hit with get up attacks a lot when I tech chase, its hard to predict when the opponent is going to do that. well i suppose you could just stand by him and assume he's going to do it and shield grab.
Also I just need general practice on controlling my character. Nothing's more frustrating than screwing up a dash-dance and getting smashed because of it.
oh we went to waffle house with mslano because he missed it.
that's where the title comes form :-D
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Post-Tournament Thoughts
I didn't mention it before, but a lot of good people showed up to Thief's Tournament, including Chad, Iori, ihavespaceballs, NES Noob, Mookie Rah, ragnarock and Mr. P
So that was cool to play with those guys again. I hope they come to all thief's tournaments. I get better quick when I play people like that.
anyway, I played a few training matches by myself recently, and it was actually more productive than usual. I was practicing getting my movement speed up without messing up and I was doing alright. I also played a little Sheik, who I haven't played in ages. I might use sheik as a Marth counter, and also for teams. She's easy to control and play.
For some reason I'm just finding out that Roy can use D-tilt-> f-smash on fast fallers. Like that would have helped me a lot during the tournament, such as against Xandre's Falco. It probably works on other characters at low percents too. and if i can f-smash, I can always up-air to f-smash :-D. I like Roy's simplicity. he's got a definite simply gameplan, I play better when I don't have tons of junk to think about. Like with Roy, theres generally only one or two options in every situation. If you play someone like Fox, theres like a dozen different ways to handle any given situation.
This will probably sound stupid, but I figured out how to not miss L-cancels with Falcon, which I've been doing a lot. Like with Roy, since he's laggy, jumps low and falls fast, you have a huge margin of error with your L-cancels, which is why I never miss them. With falcon, you might think that since he falls fast, you have to press L immediately after you attack and fast fall but really you have to wait about a half a second. Basically wait until your attack connects. Like previously I'd just immediately fast fall and L-cancel, and alot of times I'd whiff it.
Moogle suggested that I try Luigi against Jiggs instead of IC's. Because he has the same evasive wavedashes, but more ways to kill her.
I've also decided that at this point, the only way for me to get better quickly is to play good people on a regular basis. So I've got to find a way to get myself to huntsville and to more tournaments.
So that was cool to play with those guys again. I hope they come to all thief's tournaments. I get better quick when I play people like that.
anyway, I played a few training matches by myself recently, and it was actually more productive than usual. I was practicing getting my movement speed up without messing up and I was doing alright. I also played a little Sheik, who I haven't played in ages. I might use sheik as a Marth counter, and also for teams. She's easy to control and play.
For some reason I'm just finding out that Roy can use D-tilt-> f-smash on fast fallers. Like that would have helped me a lot during the tournament, such as against Xandre's Falco. It probably works on other characters at low percents too. and if i can f-smash, I can always up-air to f-smash :-D. I like Roy's simplicity. he's got a definite simply gameplan, I play better when I don't have tons of junk to think about. Like with Roy, theres generally only one or two options in every situation. If you play someone like Fox, theres like a dozen different ways to handle any given situation.
This will probably sound stupid, but I figured out how to not miss L-cancels with Falcon, which I've been doing a lot. Like with Roy, since he's laggy, jumps low and falls fast, you have a huge margin of error with your L-cancels, which is why I never miss them. With falcon, you might think that since he falls fast, you have to press L immediately after you attack and fast fall but really you have to wait about a half a second. Basically wait until your attack connects. Like previously I'd just immediately fast fall and L-cancel, and alot of times I'd whiff it.
Moogle suggested that I try Luigi against Jiggs instead of IC's. Because he has the same evasive wavedashes, but more ways to kill her.
I've also decided that at this point, the only way for me to get better quickly is to play good people on a regular basis. So I've got to find a way to get myself to huntsville and to more tournaments.
Thief's 4th tournament
Thief had his fourth tournament in tuscaloosa this past weekend. I did okay i suppose, not as good as I could have done. But I get inspired to get better after every tournament. My goal is to either place top ten at one of thief tournaments or make it out of pools in a larger tournament before Brawl comes out.
Anyway, a little bit before this tournament, i decided to go mostly Roy instead of Marth. Roy is easier for me to control, and controlling the character is a lot of the reason why I dont perform as well as I ought to. I always mess up a dash dance or something with marth. But with roy i NEVER ever miss L-cancels, and his wavedash doesn't require fingers as fast as with other characters. The only problem is that roy has a harder time killing that most characters. He also has the worst recovery on the game :-P
Before the tourney, my Roy was looking pretty good in friendlies. I play a really defensive Roy, which I think is good for him. I actually did pretty well against Iori's mewtwo with Roy. I've noticed, that since i'm a defensive player, I dont do well on small stages like Yoshi's Story. I need to work on that. Anyway, the tournament started.
Thief does a Swiss style tournament, instead of Pools like most people. It's a lot more fair in determining who advances to brackets, the only downside is you don't get to play as many matches sometimes. My tournament experience wasn't that enlightining. For my first match, I played against this good Falco, Xandre. Afraid to use my Roy, I actually went Marth. I did okay, but he beat me decidedly. The second round I went Captain Falcon. I'd been practicing with Falcon, but he wasn't really ready yet and the results showed it. I'm still not sure what to do against falco. Maybe I'll just pick roy next time. My next match is Majist from Huntsville, previously known as Mackendra. I'd played some friendlys with him the day before, he was beating me usually. I think he went sheik both rounds against me. I made a couple of mistakes that cost me stocks like missing my Up-Bs and silly stuff like that, but I probably still would have lost. I think I maybe should have warmed up just a little bit more, my movements were not as fluid as I'd want them to be.
The next two guys I faced had left, so I got two free wins. Then I faced a guy X-Pac, who played Jigglypuff. After hesitating, I picked Ice Climbers, because after lots of practice against Munkus's Jiggs, my ice climbers had always been the only characters I could consistently beat his Jiggs with. I played absolutely terrible, I could barely wavedash. I think I was nervous because this match could have decided whether or not I made brackets. the whole round I basically wavedances until I could downsmash, and I ended up winning. He counterpicked Mute City, which doesn't seem like a good IC's stage, so I switched to roy, and lost. I don't like roy vs. Jiggs AT ALL. I think I went to FD next, went back to IC's and barely beat him. Munkus watched over my shoulder. He probably would have been dissapointed if I lost to a Jigglypuff :-D
Funnily enough, you had to make at least the 16th best record to make it to brackets. I made 17th. :-/
Anyway, a little bit before this tournament, i decided to go mostly Roy instead of Marth. Roy is easier for me to control, and controlling the character is a lot of the reason why I dont perform as well as I ought to. I always mess up a dash dance or something with marth. But with roy i NEVER ever miss L-cancels, and his wavedash doesn't require fingers as fast as with other characters. The only problem is that roy has a harder time killing that most characters. He also has the worst recovery on the game :-P
Before the tourney, my Roy was looking pretty good in friendlies. I play a really defensive Roy, which I think is good for him. I actually did pretty well against Iori's mewtwo with Roy. I've noticed, that since i'm a defensive player, I dont do well on small stages like Yoshi's Story. I need to work on that. Anyway, the tournament started.
Thief does a Swiss style tournament, instead of Pools like most people. It's a lot more fair in determining who advances to brackets, the only downside is you don't get to play as many matches sometimes. My tournament experience wasn't that enlightining. For my first match, I played against this good Falco, Xandre. Afraid to use my Roy, I actually went Marth. I did okay, but he beat me decidedly. The second round I went Captain Falcon. I'd been practicing with Falcon, but he wasn't really ready yet and the results showed it. I'm still not sure what to do against falco. Maybe I'll just pick roy next time. My next match is Majist from Huntsville, previously known as Mackendra. I'd played some friendlys with him the day before, he was beating me usually. I think he went sheik both rounds against me. I made a couple of mistakes that cost me stocks like missing my Up-Bs and silly stuff like that, but I probably still would have lost. I think I maybe should have warmed up just a little bit more, my movements were not as fluid as I'd want them to be.
The next two guys I faced had left, so I got two free wins. Then I faced a guy X-Pac, who played Jigglypuff. After hesitating, I picked Ice Climbers, because after lots of practice against Munkus's Jiggs, my ice climbers had always been the only characters I could consistently beat his Jiggs with. I played absolutely terrible, I could barely wavedash. I think I was nervous because this match could have decided whether or not I made brackets. the whole round I basically wavedances until I could downsmash, and I ended up winning. He counterpicked Mute City, which doesn't seem like a good IC's stage, so I switched to roy, and lost. I don't like roy vs. Jiggs AT ALL. I think I went to FD next, went back to IC's and barely beat him. Munkus watched over my shoulder. He probably would have been dissapointed if I lost to a Jigglypuff :-D
Funnily enough, you had to make at least the 16th best record to make it to brackets. I made 17th. :-/
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
munkus and anomaly
munkus and anomaly are the main two people in Tuscaloosa that I get a chance to play smash with nowadays. my roomate and my other friends don't like playing with me anymore. I dont know if its because I always win or what. Thief lives in Tuscaloosa right now too, but he's hard to get in touch with, and I think he works a hell of a lot too.
They're decent at the game. I can beat anomaly usually when I put my mind to it, although with some characters he's able to counter me. Munkus usually beats both of us, partially because he plays Mewtwo and Jigglypuff, two unorthodox characters that not many people know how to fight. Munkus is the type of guy that can really capitalize on your mistakes. He makes alot of mistakes himself, but my reflexes are too poor to react in time. Like for example he grabs a whoooooole lot. and he also rolls way too much. But he wins against us at least, so I'll have to learn how to counter it.
Thief is having another tournament on Nov. 10, so I'm excited about this. I always think I'm ready, because I always learn something new everytime I play. I've just got to keep my cool and play smart, and get warmed up. At Smash Aid, I barely warmed up before I played the tournament, and that really hurt me. I'm gonna try to play a lot of friendlies before hand.
Other than that, the tournament forecast for the Southeast looks a little dim. Most of the tournaments happen in Florida right now, that's just too far away. I don't have a car anyway, so I'm forced to see if anomaly will take me to one, or if moogle and the rest of the huntsville crew will pick me up from B'ham.
Hopefully Thief's Tuscaloosa tournaments are plentiful.
Thief's Last Tournament (i.e his third one)
Only around 16 people showed up to Thief's third tournament, mostly because he annouced it like two weeks before. Shai Hulud, 3GOD, and NES N00B showed up. NES N00b is really good; I teamed with him and got third place in teams. Needless to say, he did most of the work, although I did my part I suppose. We won 5 dollars a piece :-D. I beat 3GOD in a set, and I felt proud because that was pretty much the first semi-competent player I've beaten in a set. Shai Hulud beat me later in the tournament (put me in the loser's bracket I believe), but I want to play him again, I might try my Roy against his Fox. His play style is really aggressive and flashy, he doesn't really employ very many tricks or deceptive strategy. He's got near-flawless technical skill, just not the mindgames to supplement it. I think he could be a great player in the future if he keeps at it. I played anomaly in pools and lost. His Sheik had always given me problems, and he beat my marth with his sheik (I think i can handle his sheik now, but too little too late, till next time!)...I counterpicked Mute City, cuz that's my new Sheik counter pick stage, because I lose to Sheiks sometimes because I have trouble keeping them off the edge. So eliminate the edge! Anyway, he switched to marth, and that disoriented me, and I self-destructed twice I think. I'll get him next time :)
His brother Cheap (yeah, him again) beat me with his peach once again. I tried another weird counterpick; taking him to Green Greens and playing Fox, and was doing good when I kept him in the middle of the stage, but eventually he caught on and camped near the edge, and he eventually beat me. So I'm 0-3 against Cheap in Tournaments. He's actually pretty good, he did good in pools (although he didn't get out) at G4S4.
I want to be good with Captain Falcon.
Improvement Thoughts
I'm trying to learn to play all the characters (Except Yoshi, DK, and Kirby), and I notice that I'm really no good with anyone except my mains (Marth, Doc, IC's, andRoy)...at first this didn't make any sense to me, but now I think I know why. Its because I follow Isai's advice (Don't Get Hit) with my mains, and for some reason I dont with everyone else. So I'll try to work on that and report back.
They're decent at the game. I can beat anomaly usually when I put my mind to it, although with some characters he's able to counter me. Munkus usually beats both of us, partially because he plays Mewtwo and Jigglypuff, two unorthodox characters that not many people know how to fight. Munkus is the type of guy that can really capitalize on your mistakes. He makes alot of mistakes himself, but my reflexes are too poor to react in time. Like for example he grabs a whoooooole lot. and he also rolls way too much. But he wins against us at least, so I'll have to learn how to counter it.
Thief is having another tournament on Nov. 10, so I'm excited about this. I always think I'm ready, because I always learn something new everytime I play. I've just got to keep my cool and play smart, and get warmed up. At Smash Aid, I barely warmed up before I played the tournament, and that really hurt me. I'm gonna try to play a lot of friendlies before hand.
Other than that, the tournament forecast for the Southeast looks a little dim. Most of the tournaments happen in Florida right now, that's just too far away. I don't have a car anyway, so I'm forced to see if anomaly will take me to one, or if moogle and the rest of the huntsville crew will pick me up from B'ham.
Hopefully Thief's Tuscaloosa tournaments are plentiful.
Thief's Last Tournament (i.e his third one)
Only around 16 people showed up to Thief's third tournament, mostly because he annouced it like two weeks before. Shai Hulud, 3GOD, and NES N00B showed up. NES N00b is really good; I teamed with him and got third place in teams. Needless to say, he did most of the work, although I did my part I suppose. We won 5 dollars a piece :-D. I beat 3GOD in a set, and I felt proud because that was pretty much the first semi-competent player I've beaten in a set. Shai Hulud beat me later in the tournament (put me in the loser's bracket I believe), but I want to play him again, I might try my Roy against his Fox. His play style is really aggressive and flashy, he doesn't really employ very many tricks or deceptive strategy. He's got near-flawless technical skill, just not the mindgames to supplement it. I think he could be a great player in the future if he keeps at it. I played anomaly in pools and lost. His Sheik had always given me problems, and he beat my marth with his sheik (I think i can handle his sheik now, but too little too late, till next time!)...I counterpicked Mute City, cuz that's my new Sheik counter pick stage, because I lose to Sheiks sometimes because I have trouble keeping them off the edge. So eliminate the edge! Anyway, he switched to marth, and that disoriented me, and I self-destructed twice I think. I'll get him next time :)
His brother Cheap (yeah, him again) beat me with his peach once again. I tried another weird counterpick; taking him to Green Greens and playing Fox, and was doing good when I kept him in the middle of the stage, but eventually he caught on and camped near the edge, and he eventually beat me. So I'm 0-3 against Cheap in Tournaments. He's actually pretty good, he did good in pools (although he didn't get out) at G4S4.
I want to be good with Captain Falcon.
Improvement Thoughts
I'm trying to learn to play all the characters (Except Yoshi, DK, and Kirby), and I notice that I'm really no good with anyone except my mains (Marth, Doc, IC's, andRoy)...at first this didn't make any sense to me, but now I think I know why. Its because I follow Isai's advice (Don't Get Hit) with my mains, and for some reason I dont with everyone else. So I'll try to work on that and report back.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Introduction: How I Stopped Being a Noob
I have been playing Smash Bros. Melee since the game came out, but I've only been aware of the competitive smash scene for a little less than two years. I've always been the type of guy who likes to win. I want to be the best at every competitive event I take part in. I think most people want to win, even if they don't admit it.
MLG
I really don't remember how I discovered competitive smash. I think I may have stumbled upon the wikipedia article for Ken Hoang, who is easily the most important and influential (and even in his retirement one of the best, previously THE hands-down best) smasher of all time. That led me to the MLG Website. There I learned everything. I learnedf what a wavedash was, what SHFFLing was, and all the advanced techniques that 90% of smash bros. owners probably still don't know about.
I watched videos of MLG events, of pros like Ken and Isai, and marvelled at how much control and style they had with their characters. I picked up my game and tried to duplicate, but I could not.
My downfall has always been my lack of patience with things like that. When I HAVE to be patient, I'm very patient, one of the most you'll ever find. But with something like a video game, I rarely put in the time.
Thief
What was it about this game then? I think it was because I was already addicted to it. I didn't mind playing it for hours at a time. But no matter how many hours I put in, I still couldn't do those wavedashes or L-cancels. I could only short hop around fifty percent of the time.
One day I noticed a flyer for a smash bros. tournament on the bulletin board at my dorm. I've been to smash bros. tournaments before, but none with actually GOOD players. I figured there couldn't be anyone that good in little old Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but when I checked out the rules for the tournament, I noticed they were identical to the rules for MLG tournaments. It's very unlikely that a noob tournament would do things such as turn off items or refer to things like the Ice Climbers Freeze Glitch. I researched, Chris, host of the tournament, and found out that he went by Thief in the smash community. I searched for him on youtube, and sure enough i found a set of him versus GA Wes in a Southern tournament. And I was amazed because these guys seemed to move with the same control and speed as Ken and Isai and all those pros.
I had to work so I missed signups for the tournament, but I caught some of the matches and played a few friendlies. Thief won the tournament pretty easily, but I played a few people who could do all the advanced techniques that I just couldn't master, and got my ass whipped.
Smashboards
Sometime after this I joined smashboards.
I'd heard of smashboards, but I never bothered to join. I think I figured everything I needed to know was pasted to MLG anyway. But I was very wrong. It's not really that smashboards contains better information, its that EVERYONE who is good at the game posts on smashboards. I could talk to Ken or Isai THEMSELVES if I wanted to.
The real reason that smashboards helped me though is the Regional Forums.
They have forums for every region where you can find people in your area who play the game. I figured Alabama wouldn't be too active, but I might as well try. Sure enough there was a thread in the Atlantic South forum called "Alabama Thread". It was started by a guy named Moogle, and it already had around 20 pages. I posted in it and introduced myself. Turns out most of the active Alabama smashers live in Huntsville which is about two hours away from Birmingham, and 3 from Tuscaloosa.
Thief held a second tournament, and this time Moogle showed up. He brought another smasher from Huntsville, Sensai. There were less people at this tournament but more good people total. I teamed with my roomate and we had to fight, among other people, ragnarock and Mr. P, two really really good players from Mobile. I remember a guy asked me before the tournament, "Are you on smashboards?" I said yeah and he was like "So you know about wavedashing and stuff right?" I said yes. I could wavedash about 80 percent of the time by then, but during the heat of the battle I rarely even thought about pulling it off.
In singles, we did a double elimination tourney, and I had to fight Thief first round, and he four-stocked me, then three-stocked me. (We start off with four lives (stock)...four stocked means he still had all four of his left at the end of the match). He moved so quickly, I really did not know what to do. The second round I played a guy named Cheap who played Peach. His peach was not as fast as Thief's Fox, so I thought I may have had a chance, but he beat me pretty soundly. And just like that I was out.
Come to find out, Moogle and Sensai took first and second in that tournament. They beat Thief! At the time this was crazy to me, that there were actually many great players in this area.
I wanted to be that good. So I began to practice like crazy. For a long time I played only Marth, but I noticed that at time he was hard for me to control at that time. He was sort of floaty, so sometimes I would be in the air longer than I wanted to sometimes. So I started playing Roy, who by that time I noticed that the majority of the smash community considered a very bad character. But I'm not one to go along with the crowd just because they say something, so I picked up Roy as my new main, and I liked it. So I practiced with Roy. Eventually I got wavedashing and L-Cancelling down to about 90 percent accuracy. I could shield grab and crouch cancel and SHFFL, I thought I was ready. There's no way my friends could beat me now right? Wrong. I played against my friends who had no idea about advanced techniques, and the results were about the same as they were before. Sometimes I'd win, sometimes they'd win. Imagine how frustrating that was for me. There was something I was missing. Maybe it was this mysterious thing people always talked about on smashboards, "Mindgames".
mslano
The beginning of my new birth as a smasher began that fateful day when I went to the Alabama thread as usual and saw a post by a guy I'd never seen post before; Michael, or as he's known inthe smash community mslano. He said he lived in Hoover and was looking for folks to play with. Hoover is like twenty minutes from my house in Birmingham! I contacted him and we set up a day to play. As I expected he was a lot better than me, another good smasher! And he played Roy! I thought this was excellent, he could give me tips, and that he did.
The huntsville smashers mentioned that they played together twice a week, but I never was assertive enough to actually go. Mslano however was already cool with the huntsville guys, so he had no problem going. I tagged along with him, and got to see moogle again as well as other Huntsville smashers such as coach, mackendra, munkus, and jwt. They all destroyed me. I believe I won 1 match against jwt during the end when he was getting sleepy and that's all. These guys were good.
I went to huntsville a few more times and met some other smashers. There were actually some that I could beat, and that made me happy that I wasn't the worst competitive smasher in Alabama, because for a while it just seemed like everyone was just on another level than I was. At one of the smash fests moogle showed me the tentative Mid-South Power Rankings, which is a list of what a panel of 8 respective smashers think are the best 20 smashers in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Moogle, Thief, and mslano were all on the list. The list just made me want to get better even more.
More Than Just Smash
Somehow, mslano convinced some Tennessee players to crash one of the Hunstville smashfests. Chad, Iori, and ihavespaceballs, to be exact. All of whom were on the Power Rankings list. (Chad and Iori were and still are number 1 and 2 respectively) I remember asking mslano, "Would you say that Chad is better than moogle". He immediately said "yes" with no hesitation. Better than moogle! Geez!
I didn't get a chance to play Chad that day, but I played Iori and Spaceballs and boy did I get whipped. Especially by Iori. I had never gotten my ass whooped in any game that bad before. Iori just seemed to know exactly where I was going to move at all times. Plus he could play with like every character in the game. I don't think he did anything less than 3 stock me all night. Spaceballs destroyed me too. After playing all night, someone wanted to get food, and we went on a legendary trip to the Grocery store, and this is the first time I noticed that the smash community isn't all about smash. Its about hanging out, having fun, telling jokes. Playing the game itself is almost sort of a formality. Just a really fun formality.
After all this playing, I got a lot better, but I still couldn't defeat any of these guys. So I went back and tried against my casual-playing friends. I did better, but they still beat me sometimes. I just didn't get it. I play with people like Chad and moogle, I should be winning, right? I guess I just needed to practice and play more. and that I did. By now I could wavedash and L-cancel pretty much at will. We found a few more Birmingham area smashers, many of whom went to thief's tournaments a few months earlier, including Cheap (the peach that beat me). I still lost to Cheap, even now. Although I could beat some of the guys that raped me back then.
Smash Aid
Then there was Smash Aid V. My first "REAL" tournament. Maybe the biggest Georgia tournament series, hosted by GAWes, who I've heard of, due to those videos I watched of him and Thief, so i knew he was good. Chad, Iori, spaceballs, moogle, mslano, thief and coach all went. This tournament like nearly every tournament had pools and then a bracket. You had to have a good pool's record to make to bracket. I lost all of my pools sets. I won one round against this guy named Boxr, but that was it. My pool was Boxr, Carter, Desu, Laijin, Drumma Boi, Reflex and a Sheik player whose name i can't remember. The only people I recognized were Laijin and Drumma Boi because I'd seen them post on smashboards before. I also recognized Reflex, because he was also on the mid-south Power Rankings. He played Bowser, and he was ridiculously good with Bowser, who is generally percieved as a bad character. It seemed like EVERYONE was good at this tournament. Almost NO ONE was a noob, everyone had some grasp of competitive play. it was amazing. Moogle and Thief got third place in teams, and I was proud because I was rooting for my Alabama brethren.
Just like in Huntsville this was a lot of fun beyond just playing smash, people hung out, told jokes, got food, it was a great experience. It was worth the entry fee even though I had no chance of getting any prize money.
Don't Get Hit
The next tournament I went to, Get Four Stocked IV or G4S4, was a turning point for me. It was my "Aha" moment as a competitive smasher. It happened like halfway though the tournament. This was also the first time I got to play Chad, and as expected he destroyed me with ease. I played some other friendly matches and was actually playing pretty well. I was going toe to toe with Daniel Zaman, who is a pretty good georgia smasher. Then the tournament started. Again, I lost all of my pool matches. I had my epiphany during my last pool match. It was against a guy who's name i think was Korg. He played Marth and so did I. I began the match doing well and got an early lead. Then he gained up on me and eventually won the round. I was trying to figure out why I'd lost it. He was hitting me with random f-smashes and I was wondering how I kept being open for that. Early in the next match, I realized it.
You see a long time ago, back in the MLG Forum days, I'd heard this legendary quote from pro smasher Isai. Whenever someone'd ask him for smash advice, he'd say "Don't Get Hit." and that would be all. Back then I figured he was just trying to be funny and just didn't feel like giving a real response. But now I realize that "Don't get hit" is one of the best pieces of advce you can give an up and coming smasher. This is why Korg was getting those hits on me, I wasn't following Isai's advice. I was throwing out attacks and hoping they connected, I wasn't playing smart. All he had to do was wait for me to miss and counter attack. I was asking to get hit. By then it was too late and he won the set, but I felt like I learned something important, and my friendlys for the remainder of the night confirmed it. I was performing a hell of a lot better than before.
Now my friends don't beat me anymore 1 on 1. That's how drastically this one tip helped me. While people like moogle and thief still beat me, they don't 3 stock me all the time anymore.
And here I am. No longer a noob. Not a pro by any means, but I'm ready to head that way. And hopefully you will read along as I make the transition, I'll share all of my reflections and epiphanies along the way.
MLG
I really don't remember how I discovered competitive smash. I think I may have stumbled upon the wikipedia article for Ken Hoang, who is easily the most important and influential (and even in his retirement one of the best, previously THE hands-down best) smasher of all time. That led me to the MLG Website. There I learned everything. I learnedf what a wavedash was, what SHFFLing was, and all the advanced techniques that 90% of smash bros. owners probably still don't know about.
I watched videos of MLG events, of pros like Ken and Isai, and marvelled at how much control and style they had with their characters. I picked up my game and tried to duplicate, but I could not.
My downfall has always been my lack of patience with things like that. When I HAVE to be patient, I'm very patient, one of the most you'll ever find. But with something like a video game, I rarely put in the time.
Thief
What was it about this game then? I think it was because I was already addicted to it. I didn't mind playing it for hours at a time. But no matter how many hours I put in, I still couldn't do those wavedashes or L-cancels. I could only short hop around fifty percent of the time.
One day I noticed a flyer for a smash bros. tournament on the bulletin board at my dorm. I've been to smash bros. tournaments before, but none with actually GOOD players. I figured there couldn't be anyone that good in little old Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but when I checked out the rules for the tournament, I noticed they were identical to the rules for MLG tournaments. It's very unlikely that a noob tournament would do things such as turn off items or refer to things like the Ice Climbers Freeze Glitch. I researched, Chris, host of the tournament, and found out that he went by Thief in the smash community. I searched for him on youtube, and sure enough i found a set of him versus GA Wes in a Southern tournament. And I was amazed because these guys seemed to move with the same control and speed as Ken and Isai and all those pros.
I had to work so I missed signups for the tournament, but I caught some of the matches and played a few friendlies. Thief won the tournament pretty easily, but I played a few people who could do all the advanced techniques that I just couldn't master, and got my ass whipped.
Smashboards
Sometime after this I joined smashboards.
I'd heard of smashboards, but I never bothered to join. I think I figured everything I needed to know was pasted to MLG anyway. But I was very wrong. It's not really that smashboards contains better information, its that EVERYONE who is good at the game posts on smashboards. I could talk to Ken or Isai THEMSELVES if I wanted to.
The real reason that smashboards helped me though is the Regional Forums.
They have forums for every region where you can find people in your area who play the game. I figured Alabama wouldn't be too active, but I might as well try. Sure enough there was a thread in the Atlantic South forum called "Alabama Thread". It was started by a guy named Moogle, and it already had around 20 pages. I posted in it and introduced myself. Turns out most of the active Alabama smashers live in Huntsville which is about two hours away from Birmingham, and 3 from Tuscaloosa.
Thief held a second tournament, and this time Moogle showed up. He brought another smasher from Huntsville, Sensai. There were less people at this tournament but more good people total. I teamed with my roomate and we had to fight, among other people, ragnarock and Mr. P, two really really good players from Mobile. I remember a guy asked me before the tournament, "Are you on smashboards?" I said yeah and he was like "So you know about wavedashing and stuff right?" I said yes. I could wavedash about 80 percent of the time by then, but during the heat of the battle I rarely even thought about pulling it off.
In singles, we did a double elimination tourney, and I had to fight Thief first round, and he four-stocked me, then three-stocked me. (We start off with four lives (stock)...four stocked means he still had all four of his left at the end of the match). He moved so quickly, I really did not know what to do. The second round I played a guy named Cheap who played Peach. His peach was not as fast as Thief's Fox, so I thought I may have had a chance, but he beat me pretty soundly. And just like that I was out.
Come to find out, Moogle and Sensai took first and second in that tournament. They beat Thief! At the time this was crazy to me, that there were actually many great players in this area.
I wanted to be that good. So I began to practice like crazy. For a long time I played only Marth, but I noticed that at time he was hard for me to control at that time. He was sort of floaty, so sometimes I would be in the air longer than I wanted to sometimes. So I started playing Roy, who by that time I noticed that the majority of the smash community considered a very bad character. But I'm not one to go along with the crowd just because they say something, so I picked up Roy as my new main, and I liked it. So I practiced with Roy. Eventually I got wavedashing and L-Cancelling down to about 90 percent accuracy. I could shield grab and crouch cancel and SHFFL, I thought I was ready. There's no way my friends could beat me now right? Wrong. I played against my friends who had no idea about advanced techniques, and the results were about the same as they were before. Sometimes I'd win, sometimes they'd win. Imagine how frustrating that was for me. There was something I was missing. Maybe it was this mysterious thing people always talked about on smashboards, "Mindgames".
mslano
The beginning of my new birth as a smasher began that fateful day when I went to the Alabama thread as usual and saw a post by a guy I'd never seen post before; Michael, or as he's known inthe smash community mslano. He said he lived in Hoover and was looking for folks to play with. Hoover is like twenty minutes from my house in Birmingham! I contacted him and we set up a day to play. As I expected he was a lot better than me, another good smasher! And he played Roy! I thought this was excellent, he could give me tips, and that he did.
The huntsville smashers mentioned that they played together twice a week, but I never was assertive enough to actually go. Mslano however was already cool with the huntsville guys, so he had no problem going. I tagged along with him, and got to see moogle again as well as other Huntsville smashers such as coach, mackendra, munkus, and jwt. They all destroyed me. I believe I won 1 match against jwt during the end when he was getting sleepy and that's all. These guys were good.
I went to huntsville a few more times and met some other smashers. There were actually some that I could beat, and that made me happy that I wasn't the worst competitive smasher in Alabama, because for a while it just seemed like everyone was just on another level than I was. At one of the smash fests moogle showed me the tentative Mid-South Power Rankings, which is a list of what a panel of 8 respective smashers think are the best 20 smashers in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Moogle, Thief, and mslano were all on the list. The list just made me want to get better even more.
More Than Just Smash
Somehow, mslano convinced some Tennessee players to crash one of the Hunstville smashfests. Chad, Iori, and ihavespaceballs, to be exact. All of whom were on the Power Rankings list. (Chad and Iori were and still are number 1 and 2 respectively) I remember asking mslano, "Would you say that Chad is better than moogle". He immediately said "yes" with no hesitation. Better than moogle! Geez!
I didn't get a chance to play Chad that day, but I played Iori and Spaceballs and boy did I get whipped. Especially by Iori. I had never gotten my ass whooped in any game that bad before. Iori just seemed to know exactly where I was going to move at all times. Plus he could play with like every character in the game. I don't think he did anything less than 3 stock me all night. Spaceballs destroyed me too. After playing all night, someone wanted to get food, and we went on a legendary trip to the Grocery store, and this is the first time I noticed that the smash community isn't all about smash. Its about hanging out, having fun, telling jokes. Playing the game itself is almost sort of a formality. Just a really fun formality.
After all this playing, I got a lot better, but I still couldn't defeat any of these guys. So I went back and tried against my casual-playing friends. I did better, but they still beat me sometimes. I just didn't get it. I play with people like Chad and moogle, I should be winning, right? I guess I just needed to practice and play more. and that I did. By now I could wavedash and L-cancel pretty much at will. We found a few more Birmingham area smashers, many of whom went to thief's tournaments a few months earlier, including Cheap (the peach that beat me). I still lost to Cheap, even now. Although I could beat some of the guys that raped me back then.
Smash Aid
Then there was Smash Aid V. My first "REAL" tournament. Maybe the biggest Georgia tournament series, hosted by GAWes, who I've heard of, due to those videos I watched of him and Thief, so i knew he was good. Chad, Iori, spaceballs, moogle, mslano, thief and coach all went. This tournament like nearly every tournament had pools and then a bracket. You had to have a good pool's record to make to bracket. I lost all of my pools sets. I won one round against this guy named Boxr, but that was it. My pool was Boxr, Carter, Desu, Laijin, Drumma Boi, Reflex and a Sheik player whose name i can't remember. The only people I recognized were Laijin and Drumma Boi because I'd seen them post on smashboards before. I also recognized Reflex, because he was also on the mid-south Power Rankings. He played Bowser, and he was ridiculously good with Bowser, who is generally percieved as a bad character. It seemed like EVERYONE was good at this tournament. Almost NO ONE was a noob, everyone had some grasp of competitive play. it was amazing. Moogle and Thief got third place in teams, and I was proud because I was rooting for my Alabama brethren.
Just like in Huntsville this was a lot of fun beyond just playing smash, people hung out, told jokes, got food, it was a great experience. It was worth the entry fee even though I had no chance of getting any prize money.
Don't Get Hit
The next tournament I went to, Get Four Stocked IV or G4S4, was a turning point for me. It was my "Aha" moment as a competitive smasher. It happened like halfway though the tournament. This was also the first time I got to play Chad, and as expected he destroyed me with ease. I played some other friendly matches and was actually playing pretty well. I was going toe to toe with Daniel Zaman, who is a pretty good georgia smasher. Then the tournament started. Again, I lost all of my pool matches. I had my epiphany during my last pool match. It was against a guy who's name i think was Korg. He played Marth and so did I. I began the match doing well and got an early lead. Then he gained up on me and eventually won the round. I was trying to figure out why I'd lost it. He was hitting me with random f-smashes and I was wondering how I kept being open for that. Early in the next match, I realized it.
You see a long time ago, back in the MLG Forum days, I'd heard this legendary quote from pro smasher Isai. Whenever someone'd ask him for smash advice, he'd say "Don't Get Hit." and that would be all. Back then I figured he was just trying to be funny and just didn't feel like giving a real response. But now I realize that "Don't get hit" is one of the best pieces of advce you can give an up and coming smasher. This is why Korg was getting those hits on me, I wasn't following Isai's advice. I was throwing out attacks and hoping they connected, I wasn't playing smart. All he had to do was wait for me to miss and counter attack. I was asking to get hit. By then it was too late and he won the set, but I felt like I learned something important, and my friendlys for the remainder of the night confirmed it. I was performing a hell of a lot better than before.
Now my friends don't beat me anymore 1 on 1. That's how drastically this one tip helped me. While people like moogle and thief still beat me, they don't 3 stock me all the time anymore.
And here I am. No longer a noob. Not a pro by any means, but I'm ready to head that way. And hopefully you will read along as I make the transition, I'll share all of my reflections and epiphanies along the way.
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